Government is seeking to reduce the cost of remittances to Ghana by at least forty percent within the next three years.
This will represent a third of the average cost of remitting money to Ghana currently.
It follows a 2.6 million dollar grant facility to the government of Ghana to support organizations or individuals within the remittances space.
The facility is among others expected to reduce the high cost of remittances and extend the reach of remittance services to people living in rural and less accessible communities in Ghana.
The at KPMG explained to Citi Business News the move should make Ghana an attractive place for remittances upon completion.
“We want to get to where other regions charge for transferring money into their countries. If you look at other regions, the cost of remittances is between 3 to 5 percent. Ghana’s cost is about 12 percent,” he stated.
“The other is to extend the reach; many people because they’re in rural areas, they have to travel a far distance to receive monies that have been sent to them,” again asserted.
The 2.6 million dollars facility is to support service providers who have cited the high cost of developing infrastructure as one major factor contributing to the relative high cost of money transfers.
According to the fund managers, the stakeholders also listed the cost of marketing their platforms as a critical restraint to providing less expensive services to patrons of services who transfer money to Ghana.
Speaking at a ceremony to launch the project, Deputy Finance Minister, Charles Adu Boahen also indicated that the high cost of remitting to Ghana has made it difficult to estimate volumes and values of money transfers into the country.
This has also been attributed to the adoption of unconventional means of remitting money to Ghana.
The end result has been that huge tax revenue are being lost and policy makers have found difficulty in formulating policies to grow the economy along those lines.
The grant is provided for by the Swiss State Secretariat of Economic Affairs.
The project spans from 2016 to 2017.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
