LATIN AMERICA February 19, 2004 (By Andres Oppenheimer, Miami Herald) - International economists are about to launch a plan that could help lift millions of Latin Americans out of poverty: using the $30 billion a year in remittances from U.S. migrant workers as collateral to allow relatives in the region to buy homes or start small businesses.

The project could benefit immediately up to 60 million people in Latin America's poorest regions, which generally have the highest migration rates to the United States, say the plan's managers at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a regional financial institution based in Washington, D.C.

If the plan works, it may reach hundreds of millions of people, bank officials said. The plan, scheduled to be unveiled later this year, is to begin on an experimental basis in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador and El Salvador. On average, relatives of migrants in the selected countries will be eligible for loans up to $25,000 to buy a home, start a business or pay for school.

The plan is based on the idea that remittances from migrant workers in the United States have become a steady and highly reliable source of income for millions of Latin Americans, which, because of its regularity and currency strength, is more secure than most other income sources in the region.

Migrants who have been living in the United States for 10 or 20 years are just as likely to send remittances back home than recent arrivals, according to IDB surveys.

'SUBJECTS OF CREDIT'

"Until now, commercial banks in Mexico, Colombia or the rest of Latin America have not considered the families of migrants as subjects of credit," said Donald F. Terry, a senior IDB official.

"But a bank in one of these countries that has been receiving wire-transfers of $300 on a regular basis should consider them as a more secure source of income than jobs in that country," Terry said. "You are more likely to lose your job in the local economy than lose your remittance from the United States."

While skeptics caution that millions of Latin America's poor would not be eligible for loans because they receive the remittances through wire transfers and don't have bank accounts, supporters of the project say 15 percent of U.S. migrants already send their money through banks, and the figure is rising monthly.

In the past three years, international financial institutions discovered that remittances amount to more than the foreign aid to many Latin American countries, and that wire-transfer companies charged exorbitant fees. As a result, campaigns have successfully swayed migrants into the banking system.

Since then, transaction fees have been cut in half, and more migrants are sending money home through banks, experts say. An estimated 500,000 Hispanic migrant workers have opened bank accounts in California in the past two years, according to bank industry sources.

To jump-start the program, the IDB is likely to provide guarantees to Latin American commercial banks willing to give loans to remittance recipients.

"We would not guarantee 100 percent of the money, but we would provide some partial guarantees," Terry said. "Although we don't think there are major risks involved, we want to help demonstrate the viability of this financial mechanism. We want to encourage the financial institutions to get involved."

'INCREASE BY A THIRD'

Fernando Giménez, an IDB economist specializing in remittance flows, says the use of remittances as collateral could increase by a third the number of Mexicans with access to commercial home mortgages. Currently, government-backed loans account for the bulk of home mortgages in Mexico, he said.

"In a country like Mexico, of 100 million people, there are only 9,000 commercial bank mortgages a year," Giménez said. "We expect to increase that number by a third almost immediately, and by much more as the program takes hold."

Some economists say the idea of using remittances as collateral for loans could play a key role in the reconstruction of Cuba once Fidel Castro's dictatorship ends.

Cuban Americans send about $1.1 billion a year to relatives on the island, which has become Cuba's second-largest source of income after tourism, according to IDB estimates.

Others say remittances already are Cuba's top foreign income source because much of the tourism income has to be spent on importing goods for hotels and other tourism facilities.

But skeptics say the absence of a private-banking system in Cuba, or the lack of a track record of most wire transfers, should make it more difficult to enact the plan there quickly.

"It's a good idea for most Latin America countries, but it may not necessarily work in Cuba," said Tony Villamil, a former U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce who follows the Cuban economy. "There will be such a fundamental economic change in Cuba that the flow of money may come through private investments from Cuban Americans or more foreign-direct investment in general but not necessarily from remittances."