Higher costs of transfers are crippling Albanian remittances

But the World Bank raises the alarm that Albanian emigrants are paying higher costs as the charges for sending money to Albania are more expensive than those to Africa. The Albanian Central Bank analyses the reasons for this in a special report.

It found out that the Western Union and Money Gram agencies operate as a duopoly, making the entire remittance flow concentrate on Money Transfer Operators. There are cases of special terms applied by certain providers to their agents, in a practice applied with the aim of reducing the competition, which can be factor affecting higher service costs.

In a chart presented by the World Bank, the Western Union network which possesses the overwhelming share of this market, charges 44 the Swiss francs in order to send 160 francs from Switzerland to Albania. This is about 27 % of the sum, at a time when transfer commissions to Africa are about 10 %.

The costs of sending money to Albania from other European countries are considerably lower, hovering around 10 percent.

This market duopoly is not the only reason why Albanians pay dearer. An Albanian newspaper research found out that Union net, the local agent that possesses the Western Union franchisee for Albania, applies  transfer charges up to three times higher than its parent company.

For more than two decades Albanian migrants have been paying extraordinary costs to send money to their families and according to the UN and World Bank these high commissions fall on the shoulders of poor families, which are the main receivers of these remittances. This is the reason the UN has set the objective that transfer costs do not exceed 3 percent, despite the fact that today Albanians are paying 7 times more thanks to the duopoly led by Union net.

Top Channel