KOTA KINABALU: Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) expects to launch Project Greenback 2.0 soon, said its Money Services Business Regulation Development director Nik Mohammad Din Nik Musa.
He said the project aimed to help foreign workers here remit money safely in a cost-effective manner.
“Once it is launched, the city will be the seventh city in the world to adopt this service. The first was launched in the US in 2011.
“Project Greenback 2.0 aims to promote transparency and efficiency in the market for remittances and reduce the cost of remittances. It will benefit foreign workers here, namely, from the Philippines, Indonesia and Nepal,” he said.
Nik Mohammad told reporters this on the sidelines of the three-day Karnival Kewangan Sabah 2017 here today. The carnival started yesterday.
He said statistics had shown that the costs of remittance in the city were quite high, especially in the illegal remittances channels, which would affect 24 per cent of workers residing in the state.
It was reported that the World Bank has set a target to reduce remittance cost to not more than five per cent by 2015, while the United Nations’s target was an average remittance cost of three per cent by 2030.
In Malaysia, the cost of remittance to the major corridors as mentioned by BNM is estimated to be between four and seven per cent using non-bank remittance providers and six and nine per cent for banks. — Bernama