|
By Nora O. Gamolo, OFW Times Editor
The International Organization for Migration
(IOM) recently launched a P55- million project on remittance
corridors in the Philippines and Indonesia. Remittances have become
one of the largest sources of capital flows to developing economies
in the world, like in these two Asean countries.
The project is aimed at improving research and
inter-regional information exchange on remittance corridors and
national development in Southeast Asia and Europe. It will use three
methods to establish remittance trends: research on remittance
corridors; policy dialogues; and pilot projects.
IOM is an intergovernmental humanitarian agency
committed to the principle of humane and orderly migration in the
world, and works closely with governmental, intergovernmental and
non-governmental partners. In the past, it had helped repatriate
OFWs trapped in Lebanon during the bombings it sustained from Israel
in 2006.
The European Commission, through its AENEAS
program, is funding IOM’s remittance project that seeks to
identify the linkages between migrant workers’ remittances and
development.
Set for 18 months, the research will map
remittance corridors for the Philippines from Italy, where 128,080
Filipino migrants stay. The research will primarily be undertaken by
the non-government group Economic Resource Center for Overseas
Filipinos (ERCOF).
The research will also include remittances to
Indonesia from the Netherlands, and informal remittance flows from
Malaysia to the Philippines and Indonesia. Many Filipino and
Indonesian expatriates also work in Malaysia, one of the preferred
destinations in Asean for migrant workers in the region.
“There is a vision shift in migration today,
and that shift involves the linkage between migration and
development,” IOM Regional Representative Charles Harns said
during the project launching.
Based on 2007 data from the Remittances Fact
Book of the World Bank, the Philippines is the fourth- largest
recipient of migrant workers’ remittances in the world, with $17
billion entering the country this year. The country’s top sources
of remittances are the United States, Italy, Japan and Saudi Arabia.
Remittances came from permanent, temporary and
undocumented Filipino workers, whose number reached 8.2 million in
2007. Filipino migrants can be found in 193 countries.
OFW remittances account for 10 percent of the
gross domestic product, said Luzviminda Padilla, Labor
undersecretary for employment and manpower development, and their
impact is felt mainly at the micro level or in the growth of family
income.
Ildefonso Bagasao, ERCOF head, said remittances
reduced the level of poverty among migrant families and had
multiplier effects on the economies of developing countries, but
these benefits are only “asymmetrical” since there is continued
increase in poverty in the Philippines.
Basing its data from the 2006 Family Income and
Expenditure Survey, the National Statistical Coordination Board said
in March that poverty incidence rate rose to 26.9 percent in 2006
from 24.4 percent in 2003, with an additional base of three million
poorer Filipinos.
Without OFW remittances, however, the
Philippines would have more than 26.5 million poor, rather than the
lower figure posted in 2006, 24 million. Regions with significant
number of migrants have fewer poor households due to remittances.
At a regional level, a 2007 study by University
of the Philippines economist Ernesto Pernia showed that while
remittances pad regional income, this financial growth exacerbates
inequality among regions, and between individuals, families and
communities who enjoy or who do not receive the blessings of
remittances.
Anchoring national development on remittances is
a “challenge” since the bulk of the remittances received by
Filipino families goes to consumption, and rather than saved for
future needs. They also do not get redirected to entrepreneurial
investments, said Padilla.
She added, “If there is a remittance surplus,
that is only when savings are considered,” stressing that the
Department of Labor and Employment hopes to draft a program to
educate and guide migrant families on how best to use the
remittances they have received and facilitate the reintegration of
OFWs in the national economy.
The IOM research will also look at concerns like
the high placement fees, expensive transfer costs, differences in
regulatory approaches and ways of strengthening financial literacy
of OFWs and their families, said researcher Bagasao.
Consistent with government policy and
directives, the use of formal remittance schemes such as banks,
remittance centers and technological remittance vehicles such as
mobile cash will be encouraged to lessen instances of remittance
wastage and money laundering, said Padilla.
She added that the transfer of remittances
through formal channels also enhances their multiplier effects since
other sectors also make use of financial resources that enter these
financial intermediaries, and OFW remittances benefit all who use
the system, such as those who borrow from banks.
|
