Poverty & Social Development: A Caribbean Perspective

In Remittances We Believe….
Let’s hope that the power of gross projections will not derail the real prospects for aid effectiveness and development cooperation, in relation to the real impacts of remittances on development planning.
With all the recent hypes surrounding the amazing growth of remittances in the Caribbean region and Latin-America, see here, and here [Remittances to the Caribbean Region and Latin America will continue to grow in coming years and surpass $100 billion a year by 2010, according to the Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF)], it is also of the utmost importance to look into these perspectives through different angles.

And of course in these debates the complex dynamics between migration and development are points that should not be left on the side, given the needs to understand or rather rally these perspectives into the context of a middle level approach for the policy formulation process, and how to engage certain set of options to level the benefits and reach of remittances toward local development strategies.

As much as these phenomena have been decried by some as levers that can positively impact upon human capital, poverty or investments, just to name a few; it is more than ever important to move the descriptive dialogues toward more comprehensive analyses of the impacts of remittances on development, and how policy options, and governments weigh-in the implications behind the true extent and directions of remittance flows.

Tags: Remittances Caribbean Development Aid Effectiveness Development Cooperation Migration Poverty Reduction Strategies Economic Growth