Gulf states send record $161 billion in worker remittances

Summary

• GCC countries recorded roughly $161 billion in outward worker remittances during 2025, GCC-Stat reported.
• The total rose 13.6% year on year, an increase of about $19 billion.
• The six-state bloc now ranks first worldwide in outbound remittance flows, according to the statistical center.

The latest

Outward worker remittances from the six Gulf Cooperation Council states reached about $161 billion in 2025, the highest total of any group of countries in the world, according to a report issued by the Statistical Center for the Cooperation Council for the Arab Countries of the Gulf. The figure represents a 13.6% rise on the previous year, an increase of roughly $19 billion.

Details

• The headline figure: GCC-Stat put combined outward remittances from the bloc at approximately $161 billion for 2025. The center described the total as the highest recorded worldwide, placing the six Gulf states collectively ahead of every other remittance-sending grouping tracked in the data.
• The growth rate: The 2025 total rose 13.6% compared with the prior year, according to the center. In absolute terms that is an increase of about $19 billion in a single year, a double-digit expansion rather than the incremental movement typical of mature transfer corridors.
• The source document: The numbers come from a report titled Outward Workers' Remittances from the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries, 2025, issued by GCC-Stat, the bloc's joint statistical body. The center is the official data authority for the six member states.
• How it was reported: Qatar News Agency carried the findings from Muscat, where GCC-Stat is headquartered, on 4 October 2026. The agency relayed the center's figures without adding independent estimates of its own.
• What was not broken out: The center did not publish a country-by-country breakdown of the $161 billion in the figures released, nor did it identify the destination countries receiving the largest shares of the outflows.
• The labor context: Remittance outflows of this scale reflect the Gulf's reliance on expatriate labor, which makes up a majority of the workforce in several member states. Wages earned locally and sent abroad leave the regional economy rather than circulating within it.
• Why the ranking matters: Being the world's largest source of outbound remittances is a function of both the size of the migrant workforce and its earnings. A 13.6% jump points to movement in one or both of those variables during 2025.
• Also: Gulf labor markets remain heavily dependent on expatriate workers who send earnings home.

Background

The GCC groups Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain. GCC-Stat, based in Muscat, compiles harmonized economic and demographic statistics across the six states and publishes periodic reports on labor and financial flows.

Between the lines

A $19 billion single-year increase is large enough that it cannot be read as routine drift. It points to some combination of a larger expatriate workforce, higher wages, or a shift of transfers into formal channels. Without the country-level breakdown GCC-Stat left unpublished, the relative weight of each driver cannot be assigned from the headline total alone.

What's next

Watch for GCC-Stat to publish country-level breakdowns of the 2025 figures, and for central banks in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait to release their own national remittance data for comparison.

Source: QNA — Qatar News Agency, GCC-Stat