The Canada-Haiti Remittance Corridor

Abstract: Every year immigrants send home billions of dollars to their countries of origin. This so-called remittance flow is constantly increasing, both in scale and in importance to the economy of many developing countries. In this thesis remittance payments are discussed and analyzed in a development context. The development impact of the increasing flow of remittances is contrasted to the impacts of the decreasing flow of Official Development Assistance (ODA). It is found that remittances have development impacts, but that certain characteristics of the flow limit remittances from being a substitute to traditional development tools such as ODA. Instead the flow is ascribed a complementary role. The Canada-Haiti remittance corridor is applied as a case study and serves to illustrate how the development impact of remittances can be elevated by measures taken in sending countries. Based upon our inter alia own research conducted in Montreal we find that an increased focus on collective remittances, increased partnership with groups of migrants, so called Hometown Associations, and reduced transaction costs via increased competition between financial intermediaries are all means to augment the development impact of remittances in the Canada-Haiti corridor.