By Agency Reporter

Wednesday, 20 Oct 2010

Remittances to sub-Saharan Africa will rise modestly this year despite a sluggish world economy, but its share of such money trails those of other developing regions, a World Bank official said on Tuesday.

Funds sent home to the region by citizens living abroad ”exceed $21bn and are forecast to grow by almost two per cent in 2010 despite a weak global economy,” said a World Bank study unveiled jointly with Kenya‘s central bank.

Remittance flows represent a significant share of gross domestic product for many African countries, but ”in global terms it is not as high as other regions,” Head of the World Bank‘s Future of African Remittances programme, Benjamin Musuku, told Reuters after a news conference in Nairobi.

He noted that remittances to Mexico alone were roughly the same as those received by the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.

That meant the region was less able to leverage funds from its diaspora for development, Musuku said.

Source: Punch