Original Language
English
Number of Pages
188
Reference Number
ENG0529
Date of upload

19 avr 2017

Remittances in ACP Countries: Key Challenges and Ways Forward

Remittances that migrants send home play an important role in boosting the home country’s development as they are a steady, reliable source of investment that helps millions of individuals and households to raise living standards, improve health and education, provide capital for entrepreneurial pursuits and, in many instances, can foster financial inclusion. This is especially true for the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, which present some of the highest remittance dependency ratios in the world. Despite multiple efforts and international commitments, challenges still remain. Costs of sending remittances are high, and there are many obstacles to access affordable formal remittance channels.

The publication ACP Countries: Key Challenges and Ways Forward presents the main challenges that ACP countries face today in relation to remittances and provides nine possible ways forward to tackle these difficulties.

  • About the ACP-EU Migration Action
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • Executive summary
  • Methodology
  • Main findings
  • 1: Introduction
  • 2: Overview of remittances 
  • 3: Overview of current initiatives
  • 4: Key challenges facing remittances in ACP states
    • Challenge 1:
    • High remittance costs 
    • Challenge 2:
    • Access to formal remittance services in both the send and receive markets 
    • Challenge 3:
    • Prevalence of informality
    • Challenge 4:
    • Limitations in maximizing the productive potential of remittances 
    • Challenge 5:
    • Coordination between stakeholders 
    • Challenge 6:
    • Lack of accurate and meaningful data 
    • Challenges overview 
  • 5: Ways forward: Key recommendations and best practices 
    • Recommendation 1:
    • Create an enabling regulatory framework for cross-border payments 
    • Recommendation 2:
    • Improve domestic payments infrastructure 
    • Recommendation 3:
    • Improve data collection on remittances and payments systems 
    • Recommendation 4:
    • Increase transparency 
    • Recommendation 5:
    • Introduce incentives for lowering costs of remittances 
    • Recommendation 6:
    • Improve irregular migrants’ access to formal remittances 
    • Recommendation 7:
    • Use remittances as a tool for financial inclusion 
    • Recommendation 8:
    • Encourage informal into formal and engage the informal sector 
    • Recommendation 9:
    • Improve coordination among stakeholders 
    • Recommendations overview
  • 6: Conclusion 
  • ANNEX 1: Country Fiches 
    • Togo 
    • Kenya 
    • Somalia 
    • Cabo Verde 
    • Zimbabwe 
    • Sierra Leone 
    • Guyana 
    • Mali 
    • Tonga 
  • ANNEX 2: Diaspora investment 
  • ANNEX 3: Glossary 
  • ANNEX 4: List of tables, figures and boxes 
  • Bibliography