Poverty & Social Development: A Caribbean Perspective

“The project will help make international remittance services more secure and efficient,” said MIF Team Leader Federico de Arteaga. “This will be achieved by promoting greater transparency and consumer protection, an improved payment system infrastructure for small cross-border payments, a more sound legal and regulatory framework, greater competition and market access, and more developed risk management systems.”

The IDB through its Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) has approved the deployment of technical cooperation with central banks, and the disbursement of a US$ 1,759,000 grant to strengthen and promote General Principles for Latin-America and Caribbean Remittances.
As a critical development, the application or implementation of such framework comes just in time to broaden future prospects for remittance flows, and their social and economic impacts on receiving countries.
It goes without saying that the needs to address matters of social exclusion for the region, and also expanding access to economic opportunities are major catalysts to position remittances within an adapted regulatory framework, and an enhanced financial architecture.

This announcement can be a good starting point to tackle and address the transfers and dissemination of remittances by taking into consideration broad-scale development initiatives, and the adaptation of banking systems, i.e., micro-finance institutions to address the needs of the poor, reduce transaction costs and leverage community developments.

BRIEF