Measuring Migrants

1
International Technical Meeting on Measuring
Migrant Remittances

• Measuring Migrants Remittances
• From the Perspective of the
• European Commission
• Mushtaq Hussain
• Eurostat, Unit C4

2
Content

• Introduction
• EU Survey on workers remittances
• Eurostat data collection
• Issues relevant for current discussions

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Introduction

• International migration is a global phenomenon
  with high political interest
• Migrant remittances have accompanied the
  evolution of migratory flows
• Recent initiatives try to
• Analyse role of remittances in development
  process, and
• Establish conceptual framework for collecting
  statistical information

4
Recent initiatives

• Inter-Agency Remittance Task Force
• G8 Action Plan
• Technical Subgroup on the Movement of Natural
  Persons Mode 4
• Various surveys and studies

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EU Survey on workers remittances

• The European Commission conducted in March/April
  2004 a survey of Member States to find out
• importance of workers remittances from the EU,
• amounts of money involved,
• the countries of non-resident counterparties,
• main transfer channels in use,
• the transfer costs, and
• regulatory conditions.

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EU Survey Main Results 1

• Flow from 11 MS in 2003 17 billion
• Data not of desirable quality
• Underestimation of remittances
• Minimum threshold of 12.500 for data reporting
• Geographical breakdown of remittances correspond
  main origins of migrants

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EU Survey Main Results 2

• Five main categories of transfer channels
• Banks
• Non-bank money transfer operators
• Post offices
• Cash and commodities carries
• Informal money transfer services
• Information about market shares available for a
  few MS only
• two-third channelled through banking system or
  registered non-bank money transmitters
• Other third is made up of other channels

8
Eurostat Data Collection 1

• Quarterly questionnaire on current account
  includes
• General government current transfers (380)
• Other (private) current transfers (390)
• Annual questionnaire on ITS used to ask following
  additional Information too
• Workers remittances (391)
• Other private transfers (392)
• Since 2003 annual ITS questionnaire concentrates
  on Services only and data on remittances are not
  asked anymore.

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Eurostat Data Collection 2

• In the newest quarterly questionnaire on current
  account we have included
• Workers remittances (391)
• Other private transfers (392)
• and asked the MS to provide data starting from
  reference period 1st quarter 2005 for a selected
  number of partners including World, intra-EU,
  extra-EU, Canada, Japan, USA.

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BOP Regulation 1

• Regulation of the European Parliament and of the
  Council on Community statistics concerning
  balance of payments, international trade in
  services and foreign direct investment adopted
  in June 2004.
• EU-MS will have legal obligation to send data
  with BOP items and with geographical breakdown as
  mentioned in the regulation.
• First reference period for quarterly statistics
  1st quarter 2006.
• Regulation foresees data on general government
  current transfers and other current transfers
  with extra EU countries only.
• Workers remittances are not mentioned in the
  regulation.

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BOP Regulation 2

• One reason for this is the fact that the
  discussions on the regulation started much before
  workers remittances became important in the
  political discussions.
• The BOP working group and the BOP committee of
  the European Commission (to be established soon)
  will take this issue in their agenda and discuss
  with the EU Member States about the possibility
  of reporting data on workers remittances.
• A political support from IMF and the World Bank
  will certainly help this process.

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Issues relevant for current discussions

• Definition of residence
• Definition of workers remittances
• Promotion of official channel of money transfer
• Consistent methodology for estimating informal
  flows
• Necessity for household surveys for additional
  information
• Longitudinal surveys seem to be more appropriate.

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Thank you for your attention