Kenyan government salute to remittances

The Kenyan government recognizes the contribution by close to 2.5 million Kenyans in the Diaspora towards the country's economic growth through their remittance, Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka has said.

Mr. Musyoka noted that in 2008-2009 financial year Kenyans living and working abroad remitted over $1billion to the country.

He said the government will continue to engage her citizens abroad in various fields as they were only contributors to the country's economic growth but also they are ambassadors who play a crucial role of boosting positive image internationally.

The Vice President made the remarks on Monday when he opened the first conference of Kenya's honorary consuls abroad, at the Windsor Hotel Nairobi.

The conference whose theme is "New Dimensions in Kenya's Diplomacy: the role of the Kenya's consuls is aimed at appraising the officials with the country's foreign policy priorities and their role in actualizing them.

Mr. Musyoka said the adoption of the proposed constitution will open doors for the country to expand its bilateral relations with the rest of the world for the benefit of her people.

He said the new law will allow for dual citizenship, thus creating the right environment for the Diaspora to increase its remittances and investments

On tourism and foreign investments, Mr. Musyoka added, the draft proposes the devolution of funds thus opening up the rural areas for business and development.

The Vice President said the government was in the process of producing a written foreign policy in which core priorities and objectives such as promoting economic development, enhancing regional peace and security with interlinked pillars of diplomacy will be outlined. He however, noted that due to financial and economic limitations, the government has adopted a strategy of expanding Honorary Consular representation abroad to conduct Kenya's diplomatic interests.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Moses Wetangula commended the honorary consuls for offering to represent Kenya abroad, citing Australia where there are many Kenyans studying and working. He assured that the government will support all the efforts by honorary consuls in their tasks as country's representatives.

Mr. Wetangula assured them that they will be introduced to the key players in the Kenya economy and the role they can play in the vision 2030.

The Dean of Honorary Consuls, Mr.Jens Peter Breitengross of Hamburg, Germany urged the ministry to keep them informed of the changes that are taking place in Kenya.

Operations Risk - Royal Bank of Scotland loses £93,000 in simple cash deposit scam

A businessman conned the Royal Bank of Scotland out of £93,000 in a absurdly simple scam that exploited the bank's cash envelope deposit system.

Senthuran Gopalakrishnan was jailed for one-year for the fraud in which he pretended to deposit £155,000 over an eight-day period, when in fact he had only banked £62,000. The bank's Fast Cash deposit system required customers to place the cash in a sealed envelope and write down the total on the cover. This sum was immediately credited to customer accounts.

At a hearing, Gopalakrishnan admitted that between 29 June and 6 July last year he deposited a number of envelopes which contained inflated details of the amounts of cash inside, netting a cool £93,000 windfall.

The fraud was only uncovered five days later when a different department counted the actual sums in the envelopes. The £93,000 excess withdrawn by Gopalakrishnan was never recovered.

The bank says it has since changed the system.

Operations Risk - Romanian police bust ATM skimming factory

Romanian police have detained 20 members of a gang accused of manufacturing and selling ATM skimmers. According to local press reports, police raided 38 locations in Craiova, six in Bucharest and three in a neighboring county.

Those detained face accusations of being members of an organised crime group, unauthorized access to a computer system, possessing card-cloning equipment, access device fraud and distributing fake electronic-payment devices.

The skimmers were either sold to other criminal gangs or used by ring members in Italy, Germany, Sweden and Romania, say authorities.

Meanwhile, reports also claim that the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism has arrested five fraudsters allegedly part of a card cloning gang.

Contactless payments - New York and New Jersey run transit trial

MasterCard has teamed with local transport agencies in New York and New Jersey on a six month contactless payments trial that will see participants able to pay for train and bus journeys by tapping their cards against specially-equipped readers.

MasterCard is working with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PATH) and NJ Transit (NJT) on the pilot program, which will begin on 1 June, covering select train and bus routes throughout New York and New Jersey.

The pilot - an extension of a 2006 trial launched in 2006 by MasterCard, MTA and Citi - sees MasterCard PayPass readers installed on select turnstiles and fare boxes along various routes.

Using their MasterCard PayPass or other contactless payment-enabled card or device, participants will be able to choose from a "Pre-Fund" or "Pay-As-You-Go" fare option. All fares purchased using a PayPass-enabled card or device will be automatically applied to customers' credit or debit accounts.

Remittances to Mexico register first increase since 2008

The amount of money sent home by Mexicans living abroad increased slightly in April for the first time in 17 months.

The Bank of Mexico says remittances for the month reached $1.8 million, less than a 1 percent increase over April 2009. The bank says no increases had been reported since November 2008. But it also noted in its report that remittances from January to April this year dropped to $6.6 million, nearly 9 percent less than the same year-ago period.

Remittances are Mexico's second-largest source of foreign income after oil exports. Nearly all of the money comes from the US, where nearly 12 million Mexicans live.

Recovery in the Gulf drives rise in remittances to Jordan

Economists expect remittances from Jordanians working abroad, mainly in the Gulf region, to continue to increase steadily this year.

According to figures recently published by the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ), expatriate transfers during the first four months of 2010 rose by 2.4 per cent reaching JD797.7 million ($1.1 billion) compared with JD779 million during the same period last year.

Foreign remittances represent approximately 20 per cent of Jordan’s gross domestic product.

CBJ figures showed that remittances during April of this year increased by 6.7 per cent compared to the same month in 2009 from JD195 million to JD208 million.

Economist Hani Khalili said that the rise in money transfers from abroad indicates that either the number of Jordanians working in the Gulf region has increased or that workers’ income have gone up.

“I believe that the number of Jordanians working in the Gulf has increased because the economies of these countries are recovering and they tend to attract more skilled labor,” Khalili said, adding that Jordanians are among the most wanted skilled workers in the Gulf.

Fahmi Abu Dayeh, chief economist at a local bank, said that the volume of remittances is returning to its usual levels from previous years, noting that the drop in remittances in 2009 was temporary, due to repercussions of the global economic downturn.

“I expect remittances to continue growing in the coming years as higher oil prices have spurred recovery in the Gulf region,” he said.

Economist Ali Tabbalat agreed, but cautioned that “remittances are expected to rise steadily but not dramatically”.

The Gulf private sector is looking for qualified and skilled staff, and many Jordanians are heading to work in the oil-rich region, particularly in Saudi Arabia, Tabbalat added.

Economists agreed that last year analysts overestimated the effects of the global downturn when they predicted that many Jordanians working in the Gulf would be laid off.

Abu Dayeh said that lay-offs in the Gulf were primarily among Asians who often work as unskilled laborers in construction projects, whereas Jordanians work in more specialized fields such as engineering, medicine and academia.

Tabbalat said that the majority of Jordanians who left work in the Gulf were working in Dubai, as the emirate was hardest hit by the global financial crisis, agreeing that the number of those who were sacked was “very limited”.

According to official figures, over 600,000 Jordanians work abroad, mainly in the Gulf countries, of whom 260,000 work in Saudi Arabia, 250,000 in the United Arab Emirates, 42,000 in Kuwait and 27,000 in Qatar.

Remittances - Hard times in Greece prompt Albanians to return home

After the fall of Communism two decades ago, Greece became a promised land for hundreds of thousands of Albanians, a place to make a new start after generations of grinding poverty. But the gold rush has fadeed and many migrants are now finding themselves to be the first victims of the Greek financial crisis. Some see better economic prospects in Albania and are tempted to return home for good.

"I have never seen the economy so bad," said Agim Aliaj, a 48-year-old house painter who returned to Albania in March, after failing to find regular work in Greece for months.

"It has been impossible for me to send money home for a year and a half. Their problems will affect us, too, very hard."

Albanians are by far the largest groups of foreign workers in Greece, estimated at 650,000 to 800,000, and have been among the first to feel the current turmoil.

Since the onset of the global financial crisis, the woes of Albanian migrant workers in Greece and Italy, Western Europe and the United States have been reflected in the decline of their remittances, which sank to a five-year low last year.

In 2009 remittances totaled 780 million euros, equivalent to nine percent of Albania's gross domestic product. That compared to totals of 833 million euros in 2008 and 951 million euros in 2007, the highest figure ever.

Remittances would fall further and unemployment could rise if the number of returning migrants continues to grow. On the positive side, some may also bring back capital to invest.

Aliaj, the house painter, said thousands of Albanians were struggling just to get by in Greece, hoping the economy would improve. Their families from Albania were sending them tobacco, beans and potatoes via buses plying the slow, tortuous mountain route.

Like many others, he was tempted to stay home and cultivate land in his village Kuc, where his wife, daughter and son live.

But he was quickly sobered by the experience of his fellow villagers, who saw tons of their onions, beans and apples dumped into a river for lack of a proper market or storage.

"This gives me no enthusiasm to start an activity because the sale is not guaranteed. I will wait for a few months to see how things are in Greece and will go back there," he said.

Unlike Aliaj, Gerald Hoxha, 28, has returned home to his native village for good.

"Once my daughter finishes first grade (in the coming days), all the family will come here to settle for good. There is some work here for me, not much, but it will be better than in Greece," Hoxha said.

Having worked mostly as iron worker, including for the 2004 Olympic Games, Hoxha said he had seen his daily income fall from 70 euros to as low as 30 euros when he could find work to support a wife, seven-year old daughter and three-year old son.

"If I worked 24 days a month for 50 euros a day, it would be fine. But in the last four months of winter I could work only 20 days. And I think it will be much worse in September," Hoxha said, adding nobody was keen to build there anymore.

At the Kapshtice border crossing with Greece, duty officer Landi Ipo said the number of Albanians returning for good had increased as migrants were leaving the Thessaloniki area.

There are no reliable statistics on the number of Albanians that are returning home from Greece. Greek officials acknowledge that an increasing number of Albanians are leaving but say it is too soon to speak of a major wave of departures.

"They say they have no guarantees for the future there. They are coming back with everything they own," Ipo said.

Driving his Opel car past the Kapshtice border crossing into Albania, Arben Haka said he hoped to find something to do here because life was becoming too hard for a migrant worker.

"I am hopeful I will find something in my country, because the foreign land is no longer able to keep us," he said.

Although Albania remains one of Europe's poorest countries, with unemployment officially at more than 14 percent, the Greek crisis has prompted some thinking among the migrants.

Per capita GDP in Albania stood at $3,840 annually in 2008, compared to $29,361 in Greece, according to the World Bank.

Albania is one of the few European countries that did not go into recession. Gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 3.3 percent in 2009, down from 7.9 percent the year before, and is seen growing again in 2010.

"Why does our government force us to pick the cherries of the Greeks instead of providing us with development alternatives," Aliaj asked. "Albanians have toiled and sweated in Greece. If they had stayed at home, if the right policies had been in place, something great would have been achieved."