(This story originally appeared in on Nov 28, 2019)

India continues to retain its position as the world's top recipient of remittances, with its diaspora sending back $78.6 billion in 2018. Considering that India's diaspora is the largest in the world, at 17.5 million (as of mid-2019), this ranking in terms of remittances is not surprising. India's remittances were 14% of the global remittance figure of $689 billion. China was next in line, with remittances of $67.41 billion (which is 5.4% of the global remittance figure).Even in 2010 and 2015, for which data is available, India was the top recipient of remittances. Remittances during 2010 were $53.48 billion, rising to $68.91 in 2015 - an increase of nearly 29%. The increase in remittance between 2015 and 2018 is 14%. As compared with the remittances in 2010, the latest figure of $78.61 billion shows a rise of nearly 47%. These statistics were disclosed in the World Migration Report 2020 , which was released on Wednesday by International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which is United Nations ' migration unit. High income countries are almost always the main source of remittances. For decades, the US has consistently been the top remittance-sending country, with a total outflow of $68 billion, followed by UAE ($44.4 billion) and Saudi Arabia ($36.1 billion), the report states.TOI had in its edition of September 19 analysed the raw data set that had been released by the UN earlier, which is now contained in the migration report. At 17.5 million, India's diaspora was the largest in the world during 2019, with majority of Indians in UAE (3.4 million), US (2.7 million) and Saudi Arabia (2.4 million). Mexico's diaspora of 11.8 million was the second largest, followed by China at 10.7 million.