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INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION FOR
MIGRATION
IOM–UPU-PAPU PILOT PROJECT
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
“SUPPORTING AN AFFORDABLE ELECTRONIC REMITTANCE
TRANSFER SYSTEM BETWEEN TANZANIA AND UGANDA”
Submitted to IOM Dar es Salaam Office by
Dr H.Bohela Lunogelo
lunogelo@yahoo.co.uk
06 NOVEMBER 2009
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Meaning of Key Terminologies Used in this Report
A “migrant” as used in this report implies a person who has crossed national borders to live
in another country for work, study or asylum. It is a narrower definition compared to the
general definition of a migrant as an “individual who has changed her place of residence
either by crossing an international border or by moving within her country origin to another
region, district or municipality” (UNDP, 2009). This report does not consider the dynamics
of internal migrants and domestic transfers of income.
“Remittance” as used in this report implies income earned by a migrant and sent back
home. It is different from normal investment income remitted by companies operating in a
foreign country to their base or home country.
“Remittance Agents” as used in this report imply institutions or individuals offering
services to transfer remittances made by the migrant to their home countries or elsewhere or
nationals to foreign lands. They can be banks or non-banks, formal or informal agents.
“Remittance System” as used in this report implies a combination of procedures and
institutional setup used to facilitate the transfer of income by a migrant from one country to
another (although it can also apply to domestic remittance).
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
I. Background
Studies conducted by individual researchers and institutions such as the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), World Bank (WB), International Fund for Agricultural
Development (IFAD), International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the International
Organisation for Migration (IOM) provide ample evidence that migrants can contribute to
the development agenda of their home countries through remittances, transfer of
professional skills and links to private investments (UNDP, 2009; WB, 2006). It is estimated
that the African Diaspora consists of more than 30 million individuals living outside their
countries of origin. These migrants jointly send about USD 40 billion in remittances back
home each year (IFAD 2009). There are usually transmission costs incurred by the different
remittance channels selected by the migrant for sending money home.
The interest of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on remittances for
development and the need to reduce transmission costs comes from its mandated
responsibility to ensure that migrants not only live a decent life but also contribute to the
economic development of both the originating and hosting countries. On the other hand, the
Universal Postal Union (UPU) and the Pan African Postal Union (PAPU) wanted to
understand required operational improvements after installing the International Financial
System (IFS) for improving funds transfer between Post Offices in Tanzania and Uganda.
II. The Study Objectives and Methodology
Objectives
The study was undertaken to provide in-depth assessment of the nature and extent of
remittances between Tanzania and Uganda and the role of remittances in the development
agenda of these two countries. The analysis of how remittances are undertaken involved
formal remittance agents such as the Postal Offices, Postal Banks, Western Union™ and
Commercial Banks; but also informal agents (buses, letter couriers, boarder agents etc.); as
well as custodians of policies and laws (ministries, departments and agents). The study has
identified success areas that require consolidation, revealed some gaps to be filled and
shown some new opportunities for further improvement of funds remittance between
Tanzania and Uganda. The findings have also been used to prepare some training material
for a capacity-building workshop of relevant officials from ministries, departments and
agencies (including post office) on the importance of migrants and remittances in
development.
Study Methodology
The study involved a desk review of the global and regional phenomenon of migration and
remittance as well as of the operations of IOM and UPU in addition to the field interviews
and stakeholder consultations. Planning consultations involved meetings with officials of
UPU and the Postal Corporations in Dar es Salaam and Kampala, which allowed insights on
the criteria for purposeful selection of study districts in each country considered to have a
high prevalence of remittances. The 16 districts covered for the study were Masaka,
Mbarara, Kabale, Kabarole, Jinja, Iganga, Mbale and Kampala (in Uganda) and Bukoba,
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Karagwe, Muleba, Geita, Mwanza, Musoma, Arumeru/Arusha and Kinondoni (in
Tanzania).
Information and views on policy, legislations and institutional arrangements supportive of
the welfare of migrants and the operation of an efficient remittance system was obtained
from officials interviewed in 14 national level and 16 district-level institutions responsible
for communication, international affairs, and labour/Diaspora, fiscal/monetary
management and national statistics. On the other hand, information and data on systems
used for transmission, amount of funds transmitted between Uganda and Tanzania,
transmission charges and the challenges faced by operators and customers was obtained
from 13 national-level and 16 district level agencies and institutions responsible for
remitting money between the two countries. These included official agencies such as the
Post Offices, Postal Banks and other Commercial Banks based in Dar es Salaam and
Kampala. Operators of courier (document and parcels) companies were also interviewed.
Informal or unofficial agents included operators of buses plying between Dar es Salaam and
Kampala and eight (8) informal agents at Mutukula border post. Separate interviews were
conducted for migrants (Tanzanians in Uganda and vice versa) to capture their views on the
suitability of different remittance systems, amount of funds they normally transact and the
economic dimension of the remittances. Overall views were obtained from 91 people in the
public institutions, commercial banks and agencies; and (iii) 133 individual migrants in
Uganda (56) and Tanzania (77) with experience of sending or receiving money to and from
their home country.
Table 1. Overview of stakeholders included in the study.
Sn Category of Uganda Tanzania Comments
Stakeholders Plan Actual Plan Actual
Institutions Institutions People Institutions People
1. Policy and Legal Custodians
(a) National 5 8 13 5 6 10 Above
level target
(b) District level 8 16 12 8 16 8 On target
2. Remittance Agents/
Institutions
(a) Official 5 5 13 5 8 10 Above
National target
(b) Official- 8 8 8 8 8 8 On target
District
(c) Unofficial 4 5 On target
District-
Border
3. Migrants 80 56 80 77 In Tanzania
below target
by 3 people
Summary: Total
Institutions visited 29 30 59
People in Institutions 50 41 91
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Sn Category of Uganda Tanzania Comments
Stakeholders Plan Actual Plan Actual
Institutions Institutions People Institutions People
Migrants Interviewed 80 77 157
Source: Field Notes of the SRC and Annex 2, Annex 4 and Annex 5.
III. Key Findings on Policy and Legal Custodians
The financial and communication laws of both countries allows officially registered banking
institutions (e.g. deposit taking and lending commercial banks including Postal Bank) and
non-banking financial institutions (e.g. Post Offices, dedicated Remittance Companies such
as Western Union and MoneyGram and Bureaus de Change) to receive and send customer
funds transmitted across borders provided the daily transactions reported to the Central
Banks. However, the laws of Tanzania do not yet allow free movement of investment funds
(e.g. Tanzanians investing outside the country) as part of capital account controls. Laws of
both countries prohibit courier companies and buses/lorries to transport valuables and
money within and across borders. As part of controlling money laundering remittance
agents in both countries are required to gather enough personal identification of both the
sender and the recipient. The non-banking agents are also required to set ceilings of funds
that can be transmitted per person per day, with Tanzania’s threshold set at USD 200, while
in Uganda is USD 10,000. This means a customer in Tanzania intending to send USD 2,000
has to undertake 10 transactions over a period of 10 days, with associated costs per
transaction. There have been some positive developments in use of mobile telephones for
domestic money transfer. Unfortunately both countries had not passed legislation to permit
cross border transfer of funds using mobile phones. This means there are two channels for
remittance of funds that are relatively friend to low-income residents of these two countries,
which are not legally sanctioned. In both countries, and especially for Tanzania, there is lack
of an institutional arrangement to systematically collect and report on remittance data,
rendering it difficult to make a confident estimate of level of remittance by migrants.
IV. Key Findings on Formal Remittance Agents
(a) Post Offices under the Uganda and Tanzania Postal Corporations
The postal corporations in each of the two countries have the widest network of outreach,
providing postal and financial services at levels below the district headquarters in rural
areas, in 2008 amounting to about 422 and 273 in Tanzania and Uganda, respectively. Of
course despite the relatively large number the number of people served per post office was
about 94,000 people. However, those providing financial services even less, about 260 in
Tanzania, thus each serving about 153,000 people. Post offices which were fully connected
to stable electronic system of money transfer in Tanzania were only 14 in 2008, each serving
an equivalent of 2.8 million people. This means people have to travel long distances to
access postal services. Money transfer services offered to any customer by post offices
includes Postal Orders (equivalent of travellers’ cheques), Money Order, Express Money
Order, Money Fax and Expedited Mail Service (EMS) Money Fax. Post Giro, for payment of
salaries and pensions is a financial service offered only to customers with bank accounts.
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All the mentioned services are for domestic transfers only. For cross border transfers within
East Africa the Interstate Money Order (IMO) is available. The post offices are also agents of
Western Union Money Transfer (WUMT) system, a private international venture, which has
gained popularity in East Africa. WUMT is operated by other agents besides the post offices
in the same locations. Customers entering a post office have therefore a choice of using
services belonging to the post office or the privately owned WUMT, who have installed an
exclusive electronic transfer software and system. In response to the need to have own
electronic funds transfer system the International Financial System (IFS) was introduced in
2006 as explained below.
International Financial System (IFS)
A third version of the software is in use in both countries, which has some improvements
that allows domestic money transfers between regions and districts, a feature that lacked in
the earlier versions. The following are main observations with respect to the IFS, as
introduced by UPU:
• Technical Aspects of IFS: The IFS is basically an extensive web-based network connecting
post offices worldwide for international electronic fund transfer exchanges. The IFS
comprises two applications: the IFS software and STEFI (Secured Transfer of Electronic
Financial Information software)1. STEFI is an information technology pipeline that
enables Postal Offices already equipped with electronic data management system to
establish access points to the IFS network. The IFS is designed to be an adaptable and
user-friendly low cost tool that can be installed even in the remotest areas of the world. It
can operate under internet speed as low as 256 kbps to as high as 2 mbps2. UPU provides
direct support for countries linked to the IFS network via UPU’s headquarters in Berne,
Switzerland and through five regional support centres, which includes Dar es Salaam.
• International and domestic roll-out and presence of IFS in Tanzania and Uganda: The
Uganda Postal Corporation had already taken advantage of the new features of version 3
of IFS software to connect Kampala with district post offices for domestic transfers in
addition to international transfers, including Dar es Salaam. The use of the system in
Tanzania until August 2009 was still limited to transactions between Dar es Salaam and
Kampala, among other international destinations. Plans were underway in Tanzania to
configure the system for domestic transfers by October 2009, at least to those towns with
public infrastructural facilities for electronic transmission of funds. However, even if the
software had been installed in the regions/districts, the software has since its
introduction experienced several technical hiccups, sometimes stopping operations for
more than two weeks. It appears that a combination of lack or poor infrastructural
facilities to roll out the programme upcountry and operational hitches for the already
1 The STEFI software is lighter than the IFS software but fulfils the basic tasks of the IFS e.g.
monitored and secured low-cost transfer services of cash to cash, cash to account, account to account
and account to cash.
2 Data transfer speed is measured in bytes per second (bps), thus kbps=kilo bps and mbps=mega bps.
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linked nodes, have not encouraged the Postal Offices to invest in marketing and
advertising the suitability of IFS as a dependable remittance system. Another equally
important factor is the presence of Western Union™, which is operated on agency basis
by post offices and has gained popularity as a preferred system for international transfers
in the absence of reliable substitutes for ordinary customers. It seemed that unless IFS
proves itself as a dependable system in both reliability and geographical spread, post
office staff will continue operating as agents of the privately owned Western Union™ in
order to effectively serve the needs of customers. This is somehow an unfortunate
situation since by its design IFS is supposed to be cheaper compared to other products,
and has the potential to reach widely and to remote parts, rivalled only by the advent of
Mobile Banking. For example, while it would cost a minimum of USD 50 to send money
through a normal bank transfer or USD 25 through the Western Union™ system, the
minimum for IFS is less than USD 5. This shows that the IFS service is better suited to
serve low income customers than the other money transfer products.
(b) Commercial Banks and their International Money Transfer Systems
All commercial banks, including the Postal Banks (Uganda and Tanzania) had two
categories of remittance handing systems. The first type of system is a set of own bank-
specific products meant for their customers, most of them linked to the System for
Worldwide Information for Funds Transfer (SWIFT) for international settlements with
other banks or internal system for inter-branch transfers and payments (within and
across borders). The second category of services is that offered to non-account holders.
So far banks have subscribed as agents of franchise such as Western Union,
MoneyGram, Visa, MasterCard, etc. Western Union and MoneyGram is the most
popular among non-account holders. In both countries the Postal Banks are the main
agents for Western Union while in Tanzania the national agency for MoneyGram is held
by Exim Bank.
The interviewed bank managers confided that for all practical purposes, Western Union
and MoneyGram money transfer systems were the most ideal for customers who don’t
have operational accounts with banks. Given that the process of bank accounts required
several conditions to be fulfilled, and the fact that the bank service might be needed only
a few time in a year, the ideal option was for one to use the one-off transfer system,
which required simple identification of the sender and receiver without reference letters
and other referees as needed when opening a savings or current account. For that reason
the estimates of remittance levels are based mostly on funds handled through Western
Union which was given the Postal Banks who coordinated and monitored national
transactions.
Commercial Banks on Migrants’ Remittance
In recognition of the increasing role of the Diaspora in development, commercial banks
have tried to implement different services that intend to simplify the sending and
receiving of money by individuals and companies as exemplified below:
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a. Banks have opened corresponding or reciprocal accounts with sister banks in the
other country to allow a Tanzanian, for example, to immediately deposit money at
his/her Tanzanian bank account while in Kampala, thus remitting money to Tanzania.
b. Banks such as CRDB Bank Ltd in Dar es Salaam opened agencies in selected cities in
the United Kingdom and USA to simplify deposits by Tanzanian living abroad
(started with 500 and 200 customers, respectively). Other banks like the Commercial
Bank of Africa (CBA) have gone further to create special investment related products
tailored to suit the needs of Diaspora in need of investing back home. Most of these
members are investing in real estate for family and business purposes back in
Tanzania and Uganda.
c. The introduction of automated teller machine (ATM) system through debit card (e.g.
Visa Electron) and credit cards (e.g. MasterCard and Visa Card) have opened another
channel for fund transfers between Uganda and Tanzania. However, this service is
suitable for migrants with bank accounts, since most of the ordinary (low income)
migrants do not hold such accounts.
Bureaux de Change
d. Bureaux de Changes have also introduced fast money transfer systems between
Kampala and Dar es Salaam, only. This system has proved to be especially popular
among traders in Dar es Salaam, who go to buy merchandise in Kampala. The cost
imputed in the exchange rate difference, which varies between 1.5-2% of the funds
remitted.
(c) Mobile Phone Banking
The use of Mobile Banking has been allowed to operate, provided the services are jointly
arranged under the supervision of a registered bank or financial institution to facilitate the
recording and reporting of transactions. This has created some partnerships with telephone
companies such as Zain (ZAP), Vodacom (M-Pesa), MTN and Safaricom (M-Pesa) with
banks such as Barclays, Standard Chartered, CRDB Bank, National Bank of Commerce (T)
and Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB). This new service is however still operated
domestically as legislation to allow cross-border payment using mobile phones had not
been enacted by October 2009.
V. Key Findings on Informal Remittance Agents
Migrants also used informal remittance systems to transfer funds, the most common one
being passenger buses and lorries, and use of acquaintances travelling to the destination of
funds. It also involved personal carrying of funds to the destination when going on leave or
for business. The main factors compelling migrants to use the informal system was the
relative safety of funds, cost effectiveness and reliability. It would appear that bus operators
had managed to create a delivery system that met all the three criteria, thus offering a
competitive alternative system to the official system. Unfortunately, data on funds sent by
bus companies was not kept by the transporters since the service is done illegally.
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(a) Road Transporters-Buses
The use of buses was mentioned as a popular means of remitting funds by 25.1% of the
interviewed Ugandan migrants in Tanzania, but only 11.7% of Tanzanians migrants in
Uganda use such system. The use of informal transmission system was more common along
the border districts because of the ease of physical movement of individuals. The procedure
used by bus operators is to get any form of identification of the sender or receiver, including
a telephone number. They seal the envelop and offer a secret password to be used for
identification of the recipient. The only setback of the system is lack of insurance in case of
accident or highway robbery, but then customers seem to minimise the risk by sending
small amounts at a time, mostly between USD 50 and USD200. Bus operators indicated that
since they were licensed to carry parcels and not money, they never recorded cash handled,
although they also cross-checked and maintained an informal record as part of validity
check. They could therefore officially only reveal the number of parcels and letters handled
but not the amount of money carried in a day.
Another finding along at the boarder districts was the usage of sex workers as money
transferors between the two countries. For a low fee, often lower than those of other
informal remittance agents, sex workers carried money from one side to another as they
crossed the border in search for clients at the other side.
(b) Courier Agents
Courier companies indicated some stricter observance of rules on cash handling because of
the mandatory declaration and inspection at border posts. On the other hand, the Kampala
post office’s EMS unit, for example, received about 1,353 parcels from Tanzania and sent
only 281 parcels to Tanzania in 2008. Although it is assumed that some might have put
money, mostly cheques, it not easy to estimate how much money is handled through this
system. However, as shown in the main report, more than two thirds of the cash transacted
between Tanzania and Uganda flowed from Tanzania to Uganda.
(c) Border Post Operators
Border post operators also provided an important role as money changers, where Tanzanian
shillings are converted into Uganda shillings and vice versa. They provided a useful money
changing service at competitive rates in the absence of registered banking and non-banking
financial institutions. The agents interviewed at Mutukula post were not willing to reveal
how much money they changed in a day.
VI. Mapping of Flow of Remittances Between Tanzania and Uganda
a) Official channel remittances: A general observation of secondary data provided by postal
banks and post offices shows a net flow of funds in favour of Uganda. The estimates in this
report are based on funds handled through services such as Western Union™ and the Postal
Office own IFS). For funds handled by the Postal Bank, for example, about 2.6 million USD
(in 2008) was sent to Uganda and 1.6 million USD (in 2008) from Uganda to Tanzania. This
includes funds handled through Western Union by all agents, which the Postal Bank
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monitors. The money handled is not from Ugandan migrants alone, but from Tanzanians
sending mostly to academic institutions in Uganda, meaning there are Tanzanian migrants
in schools and college who receive rather than send money back home. About 50% of
Tanzanian migrants interviewed in Uganda indicated they received money from Tanzania
for educational purposes.
Figure1. Comparison between incoming cash to Tanzania from Uganda and outgoing cash from
Tanzania to Uganda through the Postal Bank (source: own computations from unpublished
Tanzania Postal Bank raw data).
b) Informal channel remittances: It was revealed that on average each bus handles between
15-30 letters or small parcels per one way trip. Assuming that only one trip is made per day
and about 10 of those letters and parcels sent every trip contain some money, and assuming
that the amount is about USD 100 per letter, then about USD 1,000 is handled per day or
USD 30,000 per month per bus. If we assume 4 buses carry money that translates to USD
120,000 per month or USD 1.44 million per year. All the interviewed courier agents in
Kampala and Dar es Salaam explained that they could not risk concealing cash in their
courier bags because of the strict border custom inspections. They however conceded that it
was possible for someone to send cheques and register them as document but the value sent
is never is recorded.
Table 2. Factors Considered by Migrants When Sending Money
Factors Considered in Sending Tanzania Uganda Average
Money n=77 n=56 N=133
Safety of funds 58.40% 28% 43.20%
Cost effectiveness of sending 53.20% 21.40% 37.30%
Speed and reliability 40.30% 12.90% 26.60%
VII. Developmental Dimension of the Remittances
An interesting dimension of remittances between Uganda and Tanzania is the fact that 50%
of the money received by Tanzanians in Uganda is to cater for education purposes. It can
therefore be deduced that Tanzanians are playing an important role in building the
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education industry in Uganda, which includes employment generation for Ugandan
teachers and other workers in the industry. They also create demand for goods (e.g. food)
and services (e.g. transport and telephone communication) in the economy. On the other
side, this can be also read as a detrimental effect on the Tanzanian economy, losing ground
for economical growth based on education and related services to Uganda, for the
impossibility to get high quality educational services in the United Republic. However there
appeared to be a slow reversal of the phenomenon where some Ugandans and Tanzanians
have opened up new schools in Tanzania and were recruiting some Ugandan teachers.
Table 3. Purpose of Sending Money by Migrants in Tanzania and Uganda
Tanzania (n=77) Uganda (n=56)
Purpose of Sending Money by Migrants Senders (%) Senders,% Receivers,%
n=77 n=56 n=28
Household/Family Basic Needs 92.2 30.4 53.6
Children Schooling/College Costs 11.7 10.7 50
Business Running/Investment 2.6 2 1.8
Medical Bills 1.3 16.1 16.1
Housing project 1.3 3.6 0
Farming projects 0 5.4 1.8
Community projects 0 3.6 0
Note: Based on multiple responses on what the money is used for. Responses not additive because people each
person had more than one reason for sending money. Note also that no Ugandan migrant in Tanzania admitted
sending money home for farming or community projects.
It appears that the majority of migrants had limited disposal income to afford regular
sending of money back home, mostly waiting for a chance to personally travel back and take
the money with them. For example, among Ugandan migrants who sent money home
revealed that it was meant to support family basic needs (92.2%). Medical treatment was
another use cited by 16% of responds.
VIII. The Main Challenges in the Remittance Systems
I. Limited vision of the full scale and impact of remittances
The teething problems experienced during the piloting of IFS whereby at first the system
could not be used for domestic transfers and also had some frequent breakdowns of the
system meant that post offices could not confidently embark on a marketing strategy to
make it a preferred system by their customers. The post offices therefore continued
operating as agents of Western Union money transfer system, which is a competitor of IFS.
The continued use of the private-owned system, which is more expensive than post office
own products, denied customers opportunities to save money through cheaper system
supposed to be promoted by post offices. Additionally, the failure of post office to roll out a
cheaper system to remote areas meant that migrants could not easily send money to remote
areas of home countries.
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II. Limited investment in infrastructure, spreading and advertising IFS
Lack of working capital was mentioned as constrain in enabling the Postal Offices to create
the infrastructure allowing the IFS to work (reliable electrical supply and network access), as
well as its widespread diffusion over the country, especially where its services are most
needed to help low income customers. The manpower for operating the system have the
basic experience in operating electronic money transfer system but provided that advantage
to outsourced systems such as Western Union™ money transfer system. There is need to
ensure that Post Offices in Dar es Salaam and Kampala keep of ensuring a reliable system to
avoid losing customers since 80% and 74.2% of funds send out through the IFS are from
these two centres. Indeed the importance of improving electronic remittance of funds and
popularizing IFS was mentioned by 42.8% and 21.8% of the interviewed migrants in both
countries.
As IFS technical weaknesses are rectified, there will be need to strengthen the technical
capability of Post Offices to roll out IFS services and provide reliable services to upcountry
customers.
III. Lack of national identifications documents limiting the access to remittances services
Lack of national identification cards for Tanzanians and Ugandans rendered the exercise of
customer identification more difficult and so banks have to rely on alternative means of
paper identification like a letter from the local chief. This somehow constraints commercial
banks from relaxing their procedures for KYC (know your customer), further pushing the
migrants to resort to informal means of money transfer.
IV. Monitoring and recording for national planning
The interest of Postal Offices and other banks involved in transfer of money between
Uganda and Tanzania is centred on transferring and recording how much money that has
been transferred between the two countries; what profit is obtained in such transactions;
and retaining and attracting more customers to use their services. Their record keeping is
therefore tailored to monitor business transactions. Apparently, even the Central Banks are
only interested in volume of funds transacted. The Banks’ data bases therefore lack data for
routine or even occasional analysis of understanding of the proportion of funds falling
under the category of remittances as per the standard definition. This posed some
difficulties in our attempts to disaggregate the volume of funds transferred between the two
countries by different systems. The only formal requirement from the Central Banks for
individual banks to report on is with respect to the sector source of funds (export proceeds
by category- manufactured goods, agricultural, tourism, etc) and the purpose of sending
money out (for imports by categories, medical, education, etc). No estimation of funds sent
out or received as originating from the Diaspora as remittance.
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IX. Recommendations
Given that IFS has all the technical and logistical features of serving the low income group
of customers down to the village level, thus offering reliability and low cost of transmission,
there is a need to agree on common course of actions on:
a. UPU/PAPU and the Governments of Tanzania and Uganda should explore ways of
improving the IFS system by addressing the need for faster and reliable infrastructure,
such as fast tracking rural electrification which is planned in both Uganda and
Tanzania.
b. The Boards of the Postal Corporations in Uganda and Tanzania must also push to roll
out IFS to remote districts, where it can reach larger group of customers from low
income segments who have no other options to send money to long distances (No
bank account/ Western Union too expensive/ no capacity to travel long distances).
This will also mean revamping the post office image as a reliable service provider.
c. The Governments of Tanzania and Uganda should adopt a simplified EAC cross-
border payment system using IFS and integrating it with other banks as coordinated
by the Central Banks so that payments are done without resorting to the UPU Head
Office for EAC interbank payment clearing.
d. Tanzanian and Ugandan Government policy-makers should ensure streamlining
strategic policies such as improving money transfer services in their country through
expansion of banking networks to rural areas, allowing domestic banks to handle
international money transactions, and introduction of low cost remittance services
such as the IFS System through the local postal offices.
e. The National Bureau of Statistics in Dar es Salaam should recognize that a specific
area of attention should be the specific recording and monitoring funds under the
category of remittances to and from the Diaspora, which is currently lacking in the
national statistics.
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