In 2015 the United Nations set 17 Sustainable development Goals (SDGs) to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all, addressing the global challenges we face, such as poverty, inequality, climate change, peace, and justice. These SDGs have been set very ambitiously, 2030 as the attainment year. Substantial progress has been made to date, but much remains to be achieved. COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact all around the world including these goals in many ways and seems to have a reverse effect in all the development and progress made till date. The World Bank estimates that 88 to 115 million people have been thrown back into poverty owing to the crisis.
Remittance flows contribute towards the achievement of the SDGs in many ways. Analyses of 71 developing countries show significant poverty reduction effects of remittances: a 10 percent increase in per capita remittances leads to a 3.5 percent decline in the share of poor people in the population. As identified by IFAD, remittances have a large positive impact at a household level on the receiving side: they contribute to the SDGs by, for example, reducing poverty, improving health and nutrition, education, etc.
As per the report of Nepal Rastra Bank (May 20,2020) there are only 51 licensed remittance company however the number might have lowered due to ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Among the 51 licensed remittance companies, we, Lalit Money Transfer is also one of them. Lalit Money Transfer has been in operation since 2004, and till date we have made generous contributions towards the development of the remittance industry. Along with the help of our sister company Unlimited, we have successfully created our own origination corridors rather than just paying out remittances for other companies. In addition to it, unlike other agents, we are diligently working on developing innovative technological solutions and have created our own app with a new feature of “Request Remit” and cutting out intermediaries. This helped in paying out remit digitally in near realtime or at worst within a day.
Looking back to all the operational work we have done; we have made some significant contributions to accomplishing SDGs. At the international level, all sectors involved in remittances contribute to promoting collaboration to reach SDGs. We have contributed to solving the challenge of financial inclusion with additional support to our customers. For instance, we have partnered with Rastriya Banijya Bank to provide highest Interest in all the Remittance Saving and Fixed deposit account. Furthermore, we and all our affiliated sister companies, have produced a new campaign RemitTree(https://remittree.com/)to tackle with environmental degradation. In this campaign, we will be planting trees for every remittance sent through us and our affiliate sister companies. In the hope of creating social awareness of the environment and valuing our customers' hard-earned money, we are working hard to accomplish this campaign successfully.
Overall, the remittance industry is a major contributor to the effort towards attainment of the United Nation’s SDGs.