Kenyan remittances slip in Sept to $53.3 mln

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The amount of money sent home by Kenyans living abroad slipped to $53.35 million in September from $55.95 million in August, which was the highest for any month this year, the central bank said on Tuesday.

The Central Bank of Kenya said in a statement that remittances from North America and Europe rose in September from a month earlier, but the contribution from rest of the world slipped to $10.2 million from $17.2 million in August.

Total remittances in the first nine months of 2009 stood at $456 million, down slightly from $466 million in the same period of 2008 but up from $430 million in January-September 2007.

Remittances to east Africa's biggest economy are a key source of foreign exchange. They totalled $611 million in 2008, up from $574 million in 2007.

The central bank says more than half of remittances have come from North America in each of the past five years. It also studies the inflows to assess the extent of the international economic downturn when formulating policy.

"The stabilisation in remittance flows in the second quarter of 2009 may in part reflect the bottoming up of the global economic recession as a result of coordinated intervention by policy makers," the central bank said.