Remittances are not an asset for development
By Manuel E. Yepe* June 29, 2007 - 10:47 AM What the industrialized countries actually intend when they refer to the remittances that immigrants send to their relatives as "development assistance" is to disguise a cruel form of exploitation of the South by the North. Emigration is said to be a factor of social tension decompression, remittances a source of financial income for the émigré's home country. Truth be told, these fresh money transfers have come to be a significant chunk of their native land's GDP and a major boost for their balance of payments. However, in the longer term, the exodus of young hands and their family's reliance on the money they get from them become an obstacle to development in the emigrant's country. Better put: the economic crisis fuels mass exodus, and the remittances sent by those who leave ease the burden of its immediate impact, but crises tend to worsen in the medium or long run because their root cause, far from changing, has gotten worse, precisely as a result of the nonstop exodus.
In
2001, when the
When all indications were that Schafik Jorge Handal, the leftist
Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front's presidential candidate,
would have scored a landslide victory in
Data issued by BID (Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo) and CEPAL (U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America), the money that these Latin American immigrants send to their countries has grown fiftyfold -- from one billion to more than 50 billion a year -- in the last 25 years.
In
six of those countries, remittances exceed 10% of their GDP:
According to official sources, 169 billion dollars in remittances
made it to
There are 25 million Latin American immigrants in the
In
2006, the abovementioned remittances added up to 60 billion, and 45
billion were sent from the
The Mexican immigrants in the
Also from the
Concealed by these numbers, the tragedy lies in the fact that the
supposed economic growth is directly proportional to the increasing
emigration. Remittances received in
Judging from this rate of growth, and the amount of money sent, the opulent North would seem to be finally starting to compensate the South for so many years of plundering. Not by a long shot. For centuries, global capitalism has cruelly stripped the underdeveloped world of its wealth, sacking its natural resources, subjecting those countries to unfair trade practices and mercilessly exploiting their labor.
That the remittances sent by their émigrés end up as a form of
sustenance of the Given the current terms of exchange, if no real assistance is provided to development, if the foreign debt now choking the continent's developing countries is not cancelled, if neocolonialist "integration" mechanisms such as the FTAA continue to be forced upon them, if the rich countries keep imposing agricultural and commercial protectionist practices inconsistent with their own neo-liberal claims, no benefit is to be derived by the poor nations from their émigrés' remittances. As long as the developing countries fail to find ways to encourage their exports or measures are not implemented to keep the big transnational corporations from exploiting labor, preying upon and speculating with national assets in order to stop undercapitalization in and brain drain from those poor nations; if investments are not fostered that expand labor markets and curb popular emigration, remittances will be but a palliative to sooth an ever unbearable act of injustice. June, 2007
*Manuel E. Yepe Menéndez is an attorney, economist and political scientist who works as a Professor for Havana's Higher Institute of International Relations.
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LAS REMESAS NO SON AYUDA AL DESARROLLO
Por Manuel E. Yepe*
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