Info on remittances

Rob Katz — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 12:04:18 -0500

Ana just sent me an e-mail with a link to this issue of Migrant Remittances, a journal supported by USAID and DFID. There are some good tidbits in here, including general trends as well as research and events. Check it out.

Passing the Bucks – A BoP Market Looking for Some Action?

Abigail Keene-Babcock — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 09:22:09 -0500

"I'm giving away 2 percent of my net income every month... I don't think Bill Gates is doing that." So says Turkish billionaire Husnu M. Ozyegin in an interview for a New York Times piece last Friday about the philanthropy of individuals who have recently achieved phenomenal levels of wealth in "once destitute countries."

Sounds very impressive, but I've also been perusing another report of interest today about what some other individuals are doing with their money that really knocked my socks off - and I can guarantee that they are passing on more than 2%!

Last year, 150 million migrants sent more than US$300 billion in remittances to developing countries worldwide. This information is presented in the 2007 IFAD report on World Remittance Flows. (Since we can be pretty sure that migrant workers are not, on average, making US$100,000 a year in any country, we can be pretty certain that migrant workers, on average, are remitting far more than 2% of their net incomes!)

Nothing new, you say? We already know that there's been an explosion of services that have made the market for transferring remittances to Latin America (and now to a number of other places as well) much more competitive and affordable, especially for BoP remittance receivers who previously had no access to any financial institutions at all.

But what of Africa? Click "Read More" to continue reading this post.

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Info on remittances

Passing the Bucks – A BoP Market Looking for Some Action?