Use of remittances

An article this week from the Miami Herald talks about remittance flow into El Salvador and other Central American countries. One of the concepts in this article is using remittance flow to establish a financial history which will let families take out loans to support small businesses in the home country:

Technoserve was founded by a Connecticut businessman in 1968 who was inspired after volunteering at a hospital in Africa. The group's Salvadoran pilot program helped remittance receivers draw up business plans and worked closely with Washington-based Microfinance International Corp to detail remittance histories of immigrants and their families, Ionnone said.

``The idea is to create a so-called transnational loan,'' Ionnone said. ``We can transfer the creditworthiness of a person in the U.S. to a person in a place like El Salvador.' (more)