Workers' Remittance Flows in Southeast Asia

This report examines remittance fund flow from a regional perspective to understand its trends, as well as to identify policies that can leverage remittance.

To understand the trends, the study looks into a range of issues relevant to donors and development players:

• Migration trends as well as their social and economic features;
• Remittance flows - official and estimated figures;
• Regulatory framework that oversees international worker transfers;
• Marketplace of remittance flows- rules, players, and competition;
• Role of financial intermediation;
• Transnational landscape among remittance senders.

In attempting to identify trends and patterns in regional remittance flows, the report finds that:

• Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines are the remittance recipient countries;
• Hong Kong, China, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore are the source of remittance outflow;
• Malaysia is peculiar as it is both a source and a recipient country.

Finally, the study lists the following recommendation and conclusions:

• Existence of differences in regulatory environments among the Southeast Asian countries;
• Requirement of more accurate data collection and analysis to have a better picture of the remittance transfer universe;
• Necessity of studying more closely the sources of informality in the various corridors, and possible strategies for reducing it;
• Need for expanding the availability of banking services to companies employing migrant workers;
• Recommendations:
  • two specific strategies to strengthen the link between financial intermediation and remittances;
  • the formation of a regional task force to discuss a development agenda on remittances.