The results obtained by a survey2 on remittances carried out recently also show that, the banking system still remains less preferable by Albanian emigrants who send money to their family members or relatives - only 15.2 percent of emigrants show interest for using banking system. Some of the reasons influencing migrants’ decision for (not) choosing banks to transfer their money were: -  Geographical proximity of Albania and Greece (Albanians residing in Greece and Italy travel to Albania frequently, on average 2 to 3 times a year, transferring money themselves). -  Insufficiency of emigrants’ families to the banking system. Empirical measures have shown that while a considerable number of emigrants have become familiar with banking in the resident country (74.4 percent of them hold their savings in the banks of their country of residence), the corresponding families in Albania appear to be less familiar with the banking system in Albania. Only 45.3% of Albanian families hold a banking account. At this point, some policy implications are evident: improving population awareness of banking services, encouraging expansion of banking throughout the country and facilitating possibilities of money transfers. BoA, is in process of designing a public communication strategy that aims at brining the public closer to banking products and services, including transfers. The flow of remittances may also raise if the fiscal burden of financial transfers is reduced. Enhancing competition by increasing the number of participants in the market would also push transfer commissions down.

Migrants will be more willing to send and invest remittances if inflation is kept under control and exchange rate and financial conditions are reasonably stable. Furthermore, the Bank of Albania in cooperation with other governmental and nongovernmental institutions has been considering some more concrete measures in order to enhance the role of remittances in economy. I would like to mention a few of them: First: improvement of statistics on remittances. Reliable data regarding remittances is a key ingredient in designing and assessing policies about enhancing their developing role. The Bank of Albania has continuously stressed the importance of accurate estimation of capital inflows in the form of migrants’ remittances. Assisted by IMF missions, it has been working to bring the methodology closer to the international standards in defining remittances. Also, there is a close cooperation with our main partner countries Greece and Italy, as the main destinations of the Albanian emigrants, to harmonise our methodologies in order to improve the accuracy of remittances’ estimation. Second: Bringing workers’ remittances into formal channels. The high portion of remittances that goes through unofficial channels asks for actions to make official channels  4/5  more appealing in terms of efficiency, safety, cost and anonymity. Although, I mentioned earlier that emigrants seems to have more access to banking that their families back home, their relation with the banks is still difficult due to language problems (most often the forms are in the native language of the resident country) and in many cases excessive document requirements to open a bank account.