Re: Dominican Yorks. No Social Conscience??
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REMITTANCES AS A DEVELOPMENT TOOL: A REGIONAL CONFERENCE
May 17 & 18, 2001
Conference presentations (in PDF format)
Conference document: "Remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean: Comparative Statistics":
part one Cover of report
part two Map showing remittances sent to 12 countries in the region
part three Introduction; statistics on Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru; information on
major migrant communities in U.S.
part four Map showing Latin American/Caribbean populations living in U.S.
part five Annex showing references/sources (including World Bank, IMF, IDB, regional
Embassies, and other sources)
News articles about conference:
Plan will make sending home money easy (Tom Carter, Washington Times, May 16)
New migrants spur growth in remittances (Stephen Fidler, Financial Times, May 16)
Plan aims to send more cash to Latin America (Andres Oppenheimer, Miami Herald, May
17)
Las remesas familiares, principal fuente de ingresos (Rosa Townsend, El Pa?s, Spain, May
21)
Remittances, the money that migrants send back to their home countries, constitute a growing phenomenon, and have a significant economic and social impact in Latin America and the Caribbean. For the most part, remittances are used for basic subsistence needs and make up a significant portion of the income of those households that receive them. It is estimated that cash
remittances from migrants in the United States to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean alone will total more than US$300 billion over the next ten years.
The Multilateral Investment Fund organized a regional conference for open discussions regarding the relation between remittances and economic and social development. The conference focused
on the following issues:
Economic Role of Remittances
Reducing Cost of Transferring Remittances
Perspectives from Formal Financial Institutions
Connecting Global & Local: An Institutional Challenge
Migrant Capital and Productive Investment
Potential Role of Remittances in Microfinance
Special emphasis was given to mechanisms and instruments oriented to improving efficiency and reducing the cost of transfers, as well as to promote the use of migrant capital in productive
investment projects in communities of origin.
More than two hundred high-level participants attended from the region, including government officials, and representatives from NGOs, multilateral institutions, hometown associations, and the
private sector.