African migrants contribute 90bn to Franc Zone economy annually

Finance experts of the Franc Zone have said that the amount of money repatriated into the region by citizens of these countries living abroad is significant and boosts the local economies.

Meeting in Yaounde, Cameroon on the hills of the meeting of ministers of finance of Franc Zone countries the experts revealed that over 90 billion FCFA was being sent into the zone annually by emigrants. This amount, they said, provided an important booster to the economy especially in terms of investment and development of the small and medium-size enterprises sector. They used the forum to deliberate on some salient macro-economic policy issues concerning the Franc Zone.
The savings of these migrants according to the experts were enormous and resolved that mechanisms should be put in place to get the Diaspora to mobilise these funds for development and investment in their home countries.
They suggested that one of such mechanisms could be to institute and implement economic policies that would render the zone investment friendly.
Another issue discussed at the meeting was the need to get France, as a master, to put in more development aid into the zone. The finance ministers also examined the increasingly disturbing issue of energy crisis and its effects on the economies of Franc Zone countries, food shortage and the consequent hike in prices as well as its effects on public finance, economic and monetary cooperation, among other things.
Participants at the meeting came from Gabon, Cameroon, CAR, Chad, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Mali, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Congo, Burkina Faso, Niger, Togo and the Comoros.