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THE
European Commission (EC) and International Organization
for Migration (IOM) are jointly funding a project to map
out the remittance areas between Europe and Asia,
especially focused on the way Filipinos and Indonesians
send money back home.
Alistair
Macdonald, head of the Delegation of the European
Commission to the Philippines, said in an interview that
what the EU wants to know are the methods used by
informal workers, particularly those Filipinos working
in Italy and in Malaysia. The study will also tackle on
Indonesians working in the Netherlands and in Malaysia.
These
workers are believed to be using remittance methods that
are cheaper and reliable (compared with formal methods)
but which they cannot use freely for fear of being
caught by authorities.
Formal
methods, such as banks and other remittance centers,
normally employ the know-your-customers rule before
extending service to clients.
Macdonald said money-transfer conditions have improved a
lot. It used to be that senders were getting ripped off,
or financial institutions were skimming a percentage off
the top of remittances.
“The
more we know about them [informal remittance methods],
the more we [can] make sure that there are competitive,
safe and effective and cheap ways of sending their money
back home,” Macdonald said.
The
project will cost €1.08 million (about P74.52 million),
with the EC shouldering €867,536. The rest of the money
will come from IOM. The project will run for 18 months,
touring parts of
Europe and
Southeast Asia to gather data, according to documents.
Ildefonso Bagasao, president of nonprofit group Economic
Resource Center for Overseas Filipinos, the project
consultant, said the EC and IOM picked the Philippines
and Indonesia based on recorded volume of remittances
from
Europe.
Bagasao
said that even if the proponents wanted to include other
countries in the region, there are no available data
coming from other Southeast Asian countries, such as
those from the Greater Mekong peninsula.
Results
of the study will be used as a working document for a
policy dialogue, first between the
Philippines
and Italy, and then Indonesia and the Netherlands. The
measure is seen as instrumental in the creation of a
Euro-Asian remittance and development report that will
include action plans for other areas in the region and
in Europe.
There
are about 8.2 million Filipinos abroad, known as OFW, or
overseas Filipino workers.
According to a World Bank study, total remittances to
the Philippines should be $17 billion, including
informal remittances of between $3 billion and $8
billion.
Last
year Filipinos abroad remitted some $14.4 billion,
according to numbers from the central bank. The amount
is larger than the combined official development
assistance and foreign direct investments to the
Philippines.
There
are about 800,000 undocumented Filipino migrants abroad,
an estimated 20,000 of them are in
Italy
and 125,000 in Malaysia.
On the
other hand, there were 4.3 million Indonesians working
abroad, most of them contract workers in oil-rich Saudi
Arabia and or migrants in the Netherlands, Indonesia’s
former colonial ruler. In 2007 Indonesians abroad are
estimated to have sent some $5.7 billion to Indonesia.
An estimated 1.2 million undocumented Indonesians work
in Malaysia. |
