Summary
Despite a general policy of austerity and cut backs, the budget for development aid has been ring fenced by the coalition government. Frances Cairncross asks whether a more relaxed immigration policy might be a better way for the UK to help the developing world.
The official aid budget is dwarfed by a private form of help for the developing world: remittances sent home by immigrants working in richer countries.
So should governments keen to help the developing world encourage migration and remittances as a replacement for state-funded aid? "They have the key advantage that the people who send them know the people who are supposed to be receiving them... There's less opportunity for corruption and for waste... and they might have lower overhead costs," argues Owen Barder of the Center for Global Development.
Frances Cairncross, rector of Exeter College, Oxford and former managing editor of The Economist, explores the limits of this free market alternative to state-funded development aid.
Contributors include:
Steve Baker Conservative MP for Wycombe
Dilip Ratha Migration and remittances expert from the World Bank and the University of Sussex
Owen Barder Senior fellow of Washington DC think-tank, the Center for Global Development
Hetty Kovach Senior policy adviser to Oxfam
Devesh Kapur Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania
Onyekachi Wambu From the African Foundation for Development, or AFFORD
Alex Oprunenco Head of international programmes with Moldovan think-tank, Expert Grup
Professor Paul Collier Author of The Bottom Billion and director at the Oxford University Centre for the study of African Economies
Producers: Helen Grady and Daniel Tetlow.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
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| 0:35.4 | Sounds. |
| 0:36.4 | Thank you for listening to this podcast of Analysis. |
| 0:39.6 | In this edition, in the light of the Ring Fencing of the aid budget by the coalition government |
| 0:44.4 | Francis Cairncross asks whether actually cutting the aid budget |
| 0:48.2 | and relaxing immigration controls would be a more effective way to deal with world poverty. |
| 0:54.0 | Hi, my name is Eva from Lithuania and I help customers you know for sending money from one country to another. |
| 1:10.0 | Immigrants from around the world are queuing up at Eiva's desk in West London to send money back to their families. |
| 1:16.0 | Jamaica, Pakistan, Ghana, Poland, Philippines. |
| 1:21.0 | And the main reason I would say is for the family to pay for goods and services. |
| 1:27.0 | My name is Olive and I've just sent money to my family in Jamaica because they have to pay bills and they have to send |
| 1:37.1 | the children to school. My name is Shaggy Patel and this week we sent to Pakistan as a gift to their family members after Ramadan. |
| 1:49.0 | Money goes direct to the family member because family can securely receive money themselves instead via going |
| 1:56.2 | through another channel. The money doesn't get lost definitely. |
| 2:01.3 | And every year immigrant workers like Shagid and Olive send billions of pounds home from |
| 2:06.4 | money transfer centres like this one. These remittances are one of the unsung success stories |
| 2:12.3 | of the fight against poverty and developing |
... |
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