Kathmandu, Sept. 20
IME and United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) have
signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to support remittance-recipient
women with livelihood and skill development training and problem solving.
They also agree to enhance the formalisation of remittance
inflow in Nepal.
“This agreement will primarily focus on addressing the
challenges of the remittance-recipient women and addressing those problems,”
said Hem Raj Dhakal, Managing Director of IME Group, at a programme organised
to sign the MoU in the Capital on Tuesday.
Talking to The Rising Nepal after the event, he said
that it was the first step in supporting the women of the families that have
their male members abroad for employment, and other remittance companies and
stakeholders would be roped into the programme in order to extend the reach and
impact of the project.
“This is a national campaign and we want every stakeholder
out there, including the government to be the part of this. With this campaign,
we aim to support the government in the national drive of ‘Digital Nepal
Framework’ as well,” he said.
According to him, the MoU would also help to forge a
collaboration between the IME and UNCDF in increasing the inflow of remittance
in digital wallet, thus supporting the reach of and access to the digital technology.
This has come at a time when there is a massive surge in the
youth migration from Nepal to the Gulf, Malaysia and elsewhere in the
post-COVID-19 situation but remittance inflow has not witnessed a promising
trend.
According to the latest report of the Nepal Rastra Bank
(NRB), remittance inflows increased by 20.3 per cent to Rs. 92.21 billion in
the first month of the current fiscal year 2022/23 against a decrease of 17.4
per cent in the same period last year.
However, the number of Nepali workers (institutional and
individual - new) taking approval for foreign employment increased by 222.8 per
cent to 44,540 in the first month this year. Likewise, the number of Nepali
workers obtaining approval for renew entry for foreign employment increased by 75.4
per cent to 20,390. It had increased by 286.1 per cent last year.
IME said in a statement that it was collaborating with the
UNCDF since early 2021 to generate customer insights that will inform the
development of migrant-centric and gender-smart financial product and policy
making.
According to a latest report by the NRB, about 65 per cent
of households headed by females received remittance compared to 30 per cent of
households headed by male counterparts.
According to the company, the collaboration led to
institutional and data mapping exercises, a market scan, supply-side data
analytics of 50 million remittance transactions – international and domestic –
conducted via mobile wallets and agents.
“Inbound remittances are a lifeline for Nepal’s economy and
people. To support these transactions, in 2020, IME integrated its existing
international remittance and domestic mobile wallet service to enable customers
to receive international remittance transfers directly into their mobile
wallets,” said IME.
However, according to a study conducted by the UNCDF,
although evidence suggested that digital remittances accelerate the financial
inclusion and resilience of migrants’ families, especially women, they have
been slower to adopt the mobile service than men.
They suggested that integrating the products reduces
barriers to entry and helps overcome the digital and financial services gap.
No comments:
Post a Comment