<incom> Remittances and development

[Scott S Robinson]

I thank Steve Cisler for hauling me on stage to comment
on remittances, ICTs and development.  There is a growing,
even boisterous discussion around the argument that increased
remittance flows can and do lead to some form of development
for migrants' families "back home".  While remittance transfer are
a lucrative business for a few, their growing pace also relieves political
pressure for demand on social services.  Research indicates that 90%
of these funds are devoted to consumption, and the remaining 10%
often as well, because trustworthy, culturally appropriate and user-
friendly investment options are absent.  The challenge is to tailor
ICTs to generate decision support tools that assist migrants, their
families and organizations, microfinance institutions as well as gov't
agencies to channel some of these potential savings into worthwhile
and sustainable projects.  To date, there are few signs that elites who
control the public policy decision making process inside Latin American
gov'ts and their cousins in the international financial institutions (read:
World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank) are paying much
attention to these opportunities.

Scott S. Robinson
www.uam-antropologia.info
www.latam.ufl.edu/news/conf-papers/robinsonpaperforconf06.pdf

México, D.F.






>Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re:  icts and remittances  (Steve Cisler)
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 05:08:10 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Steve Cisler <sacisler at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Re: <incom> icts and remittances
>To: Geert Lovink <geert at xs4all.nl>, incom-l at incommunicado.info
>Message-ID: <20060619120810.83900.qmail at web33211.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
>Remittances have captured the interest of many people
>on all parts of the political spectrum, and Ford
>Foundation gave money for some grass roots groups to
>look at the issue and the kinds of services they
>provided, esp. computer access.
>
>Because of criticism, at least for Latin American
>traffic, major institutions have lowered costs of
>moving money securely from US/Canada to many parts of
>Latin America, and there are alternative schemes to
>use telecenters to do this even more cheaply.
>
>I think Scott Robinson (on this list) could make
>extensive comments about the effects remittances have
>had on national budgets/efforts to address regional
>problems. He has been talking about this and writing
>on the subject for ten years or so.
>
>--- Geert Lovink <geert at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
> > (For me, the remittance story naturally fits into
> > the larger picture of
> > ICT4D. As the rich history of Western Union, est.
> > 1864, shows, the
> > telco business and sending money, info about markets
> > and money, have
> > been linked from the early days. Is more Internet,
> > phones and
> > telecenters inevitably going to mean more an even
> > larger global
> > remittance industries? Geert)
> >
> > http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004564.html
> >
> > Remittances | Alex Steffen
> > QuickChanges see all posts in this category
> >
> > In some African countries, Christopher Lydon reminds
> > us on his show
> > Radio Open Source, money sent home from abroad now
> > makes up a quarter
> > of the Gross National Product. We're covered
> > remittances before (and
> > some of the innovations being tested to make helping
> > the homeland
> > easier), but this show is a fabulous introductory
> > overview of the
> > concept and the controversies:
> >
> > Migrant workers will remit more than $232 billion to
> > their families
> > this year. The money migrant workers earn —
> > harvesting produce in
> > California, cleaning houses in Singapore, and
> > tending children in
> > Kuwait­ is meager by the standards of the developed
> > world, but it means
> > everything for their families back home. $232
> > billion is twice what the
> > world paid out in international aid last year; in
> > Latin America it was
> > more than aid and foreign direct investment
> > combined. This is big
> > business, and economists are just starting to take
> > notice.
> >
> > This year, the LA Times has been running a series of
> > articles on
> > remittances, calling them “The New Foreign Aid.”
> > Policy makers like
> > this line­ they like to shrug off questions about
> > the slim foreign aid
> > budget by coupling those numbers with the huge sums
> > of money that
> > workers are remitting home. It’s all going to the
> > same place, right?
> >
> > Posted by Alex Steffen at June 12, 2006 04:48 PM |
> > TrackBack
> >
> >
> >
> >
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>End of incom-l Digest, Vol 30, Issue 12
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