Romanian emigrants saved more than $17 billion in 2010 and remitted home about $4 billion, a study showed.

The average annual remittances per expatriate amounted to $3,100, the study drawn up by the International Agency for Source Country Information (IASCI) and the Soros Foundation read.

But 40 per cent of the roughly 2.9 million Romanian expatriates did not remit any money to the families left behind.

“This surprising feature may be explained by the low return intentions of Romanian emigrants and by factors related to membership of the European Union.”

“The main conclusion is that migrants migrate in order to achieve a savings objective rather than to remit,” the author of the study, IASCI director Nicolaas de Zwager, said.

He said that similar studies conducted in recent years in Albania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Moldova and Kosovo had revealed different patterns of behaviour among migrants.

“In Moldova, women migrate mostly to Italy and Spain, while men either go to Russia or stay home to look after the children.”

“This is why a Moldovan migrant’s remittances account for as much as 60 per cent of revenues,” he stressed.

Romanians most often emigrate as a couple and send less money to parents at home.

Their most important savings objectives are to purchase or upgrade a home, invest in a business or in children’s education, and secure a pension.

“Remittances are not an engine of development, quite on the contrary, because people who get remittances work less,” Mr de Zwager said.

More than 15,000 households and 2,900 migrants were interviewed for this study.