
Calling for more deregulation
The World Bank says that remittance flows to the developing world are set to reach $406billion this year, a 6.5% rise on last year, but has called for financial and telecommunication bodies to come up with new rules regarding mobile remittances.
According to the World Bank non-bank entities are being prevented from conducting financial services by many central banks which can be linked to the fact that there is a grey area in terms of regulation of mobile remittance between the financial and telecommunication industries.
With $70billion, India is the top recipient of officially recorded remittances for 2012 followed by China ($66 billion), the Philippines and Mexico ($24 billion each), and Nigeria ($21 billion). “The global community has made progress in three out of four areas of the global remittances agenda – data, remittance costs, and leveraging remittances for capital market access for countries. Progress, however, has been slow in the area of linking remittances to financial access for the poor. There is great potential for developing remittance-linked micro-saving and micro-insurance schemes and for small and medium enterprise (SME) financing,” said Dilip Ratha, manager of the World Bank’s migration and remittances unit.
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