Portugal’s Ministry of Finance, the Portuguese Banking Association and the Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) will hold a conference on remittances to Brazil on Thursday, May 25 in Lisbon.
At the conference, which will take place from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Ministry of Finance’s Salão Nobre conference room, experts will present new research and case studies on money transfers made by Brazilian immigrants living in Portugal.
These flows, known as remittances, have become a key source of income for tens of millions of families in Latin America and the Caribbean, which received a total US$ 53.6 billion last year from its expatriates, according to MIF estimates. Brazil alone received $6.4 billion from its migrants in the United States, Japan, Portugal and other European nations.
The Lisbon conference is due to be opened by the State Secretary of State for Treasury and Finance, Carlos Costa Pina. Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation João Cravinho, Portuguese Banking Association President João Salgueiro and MIF Deputy Manager Fernando Jiménez-Ontiveros will also take part in the ceremony.
The MIF, an autonomous fund administered by the IDB, promotes private sector development in Latin America and the Caribbean, with an emphasis on microenterprise and small business. Over the past five years it has done pioneering research and projects involving remittances.
The IDB is the leading source of multilateral financing for economic and social development projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. Portugal is a non-borrowing member of the IDB and a MIF donor.