Migrant workers transfer US$256 bln to their families in Asia Pacific
KUALA LUMPUR: Last year, migrant workers sent US$256 billion (US$1 = RM3.93) to their families in the Asia-Pacific region, representing 53 per cent of flows worldwide, with India, China and the Philippines being the largest remittance-receiving countries in the world.
The remittance has grown by 4.87 per cent since 2008, with the rates flattening in recent years.
“Increasingly, the majority of migrants (60 per cent) now find work in the region with Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand being major destinations for migrant workers,” according to the report ‘RemitSCOPE -- Remittance markets and opportunities -- Asia and the Pacific’ and a new web portal on remittances released yesterday by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
It said remittance outflows from the region amounted to US$78 billion, of which 93 per cent remained in the region.
“While remittances benefit about 320 million family members in the region, most of them in rural areas, remittance markets still need to transform to ensure that families can benefit fully from the flows,” it said.
“The promise of technological innovation in the remittance marketplace could bring about a fundamental transformation for hundreds of millions benefiting from these flows. But this transformative change has not yet happened,” IFAD senior remittance expert, Pedro De Vasconcelos said.
He also pointed out that outdated regulatory barriers on both sending and receiving ends resulted in higher and less transparent costs for the two billion transactions a year – most amounting to just US$200 to US$300 each.
They also make it less likely and more difficult to convert remittances into savings and investments.