Colloquium conducted by Dr. Erwin Alampay of NCPAG, Philippines.

Presentation began by looking at the potential for M-money.

Why should we use m-money?

Improving efficiency: Improve services, financial services. BOP a target.

BOP (migrants) relies on various forms of remittances

Looking at Filipinos, 9% of BOP had a relative living abroad, and 13% in another part of the country, so there is a vested interest in m-money.

At present about 5% is going through informal channels according to the Filipino central bank. According to respondents about 80% sent through banks.

Workers need access to bank accounts in both the remitting and remitted country for remittances through banks. This is a limitation. M-money may not necessarily need an account in the remitting country.

Filipino workers generally prefere formal channels. Todays presentation will focus on…

Narayana Murthy, the ‘IT Guru’ is in Colombo. ‘Entrepreneurship and IT for National Integration: A Challenge for Sri Lanka’ was his topic addressing Sri Lankan software industry representatives, on Saturday. The well attended event was organized by the three month old Sri Lanka Association of Software and Service Companies (SLASSCOM) that has ambitious plans to follow elder brother, NASSCOM.

Murthy talked for 40 minutes, and delivered the gems, for anybody to pick. Develop infrastructure; Build HR or import if not enough; Encourage foreign investment; Avoid fat government; Give confidence to private sector; Nurture venture capitalists: Change labour laws; Provide equal opportunities for both genders; Ensure peace, political stability and correct fiscal environment because they are the key to the growth of IT and ITES industries and don’t…

One hopes of course that this will not detract from the Central Bank’s work on bringing inflation down to single digits and rebuilding trust in the banking system.

Sri Lanka will issue new rules covering financial transactions through mobile phones, Central Bank Governor Nivard Cabraal said, as the island’s fast growing celcos join banks to offer new payment methods.

“Given the increased usage of mobile phones for financial transactions, the Central Bank intends to issue new operating guidelines for mobile payments during 2009,” Cabraal said in an annual policy speech Friday.

He said the move was part of an overall effort to improve the confidence in electronic payments, which would also cover payment cards.

Full report.

Dr Hans Wijayasuriya, the CEO of Dialog Telekom, Sri Lanka’s largest mobile operator, gave an illuminating talk on his company’s BOP strategy on the 27th of September, at the Central Bank lecture series.   He claims that his company was the first in the region to move away from a focus ARPU to a profit-per-minutes focus as early as 1997-98.   Here is another mobile operator who is doing well with a similar strategy.

Telecoms in the Caribbean | The Irish are coming | Economist.com

Digicel has prospered by introducing modern technology and innovative services into stodgy, uncompetitive markets. Its entry into Jamaica led to drastic reductions in prices and showed the region just how much it stood to gain from liberalisation. Digicel used a similar recipe in Haiti.…

By Rohan Samarajiva 
LBO >> Choices : Priceless Link      
08 March 2007 08:26:29

http://www.lbo.lk/fullstory.php?newsID=2020236857&no_view=1&SEARCH_TERM=24 
 
March 08 (LBO) – Indonesia, like Sri Lanka, sends its women to foreign lands to work as housemaids. The numbers may be larger, though the proportion is smaller. 
 
Telecom networks are expanding fast in both countries, Indonesia faster. The telecom sector is attracting massive investments in both countries as operators scramble to meet the burgeoning demand.

Generally, politicians and officials responsible for a sector are happy when it grows. Therefore, I was surprised to hear several senior telecom officials in Indonesia express concern about lowered gold sales supposedly caused by excessive use of calling cards by expatriate housemaids.

According to an equity research firm, the limits of the addressable market in mobile in Sri Lanka will be reached when 2 million more phones are connected. This conclusion needs further interrogation, but on first glance it looks like they have the mobile/per 100 number understated by about 1.1, which does not bode well for the veracity of their claims. For 4.3 million phones to give a mobile teledensity of 21.5, the population has to be 20 million. Last we heard, Sri Lanka had 19 million people.

“Sri Lanka’s mobile phone penetration is due to peak at 38 percent in 2008,
amidst regulatory bottlenecks to iron out crucial issues like interconnection and the management of frequency spectrum, an equity research report said Wednesday.

There are over 4.3 million…

Findings from two surveys

The Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA) held its twenty-seventh Open Forum,  to discuss “Living Conditions of the North and the East” of Sri Lanka in relation to the rest of the country from the findings of the Consumer Finances and Socio Economic (CFS) survey 2003/2004 conducted by the Central Bank. This is the eighth of a series of CFS surveys conducted by the central bank that dates back to 1953. The survey yielded the first set of household data on the North and the East since 1983. The CFS survey was conducted immediately after the cease fire spanning over 2003/2004.

“Living Conditions of the North and the East” was presented by Dr. Anila Dias Bandaranaike, Director, Department of Statistics, central bank.

The presentation was discussed by Rohan Samarajiva, Executive Director…

This serves, perhaps, as a response to the most recent comment:

Almost all the efforts of elites like Prof Samarajeewa has been a farce. The rural -urban gap has widened as clearly indicative of offerings made in wireless

Chamintha Thilakarathna (Reuters)
Colombo, October 1

After 25 years selling fruit and vegetables at a market in downtown Colombo, Sri Lankan trader MW Ranjith made an investment that to his amazement transformed his life and his business — he bought a mobile phone.

For years Ranjith, and thousands of traders and farmers like him, went without phones, discouraged by high land line charges and lengthy installation delays.

But now a boom in the mobile telecoms market is pulling the informal sector into the economy and even influencing food prices.

“Before I got the…

Dr. Randy Spence spoke of his experiences in Somalia, where there isn’t much government to speak of. But people are using ICTs.

However, he emphasized that ICTs must drop in cost for the investments of the 1990s to bear fruit. “I’m involved in nanotech and biotech, and fairly rapid diffusion of this technology will be very important.”

Although mobile and wireless access are expanding, fixed line and Internet access lag – and the differences are largely due to regulation.

The future may be wireless broadband, but for the foreseable future the policy is fixed line.

Dr. Michael Spence

Dr. Spence began by telling his economic perspective on the importance of good governance. “There’s a lot of talk about how all you need is a market system and that’s just nonsense.…