‘Data harvesting vital for growth’
KUALA LUMPUR: Data harvesting from Malaysia’s remittance business, which currently stands at RM33 billion, is vital in boosting the segment further, says Bank Negara deputy governor Jessica Chew Cheng Lian.
She said over the past decade, remittances had experienced dynamic growth in Asia with a 55 per cent of all flows, equals to more than 20 per cent of gross domestic product.
“It is encouraging that efforts are being taken to ensure the availability of official global data sources on remittance flows, yet challenges remain in ensuring that the data is both complete and comparable,” said Chew at the Global Forum on Remittances 2018 Asia-Pacific, here, yesterday.
“These challenges are compounded by an increasing need for data at a more granular and disaggregated level. For example, initiatives by the United Nations Capital Development Fund to survey remittance recipients in the Mekong region helped develop a better understanding of relationships between gender and financial inclusion, but such data is not available in many countries.”
Chew said there were huge opportunities to collect and share remittance and migration data at the Asean level, given the increasing size of intra-regional migration.
“Without good data, we may not move very far or with much confidence in efforts to increase the development impact of remittances,” she added.
Remittances from Asia Pacific amounted to US$256 billion (RM1.01 trillion ) last year, with Malaysia contributing some RM33 billion.
About US$6 trillion is projected to be sent to developing countries by 2030, of which more than half to the Asia-Pacific region.