Washington, DC — The government is streamlining investment procedures with the aim of doubling the $1 billion that Kenyans abroad now send home each year, Finance minister Amos Kimunya said on Friday.

The minister spoke with the Sunday Nation in the midst of a series of meetings with Kenyans living in five cities in North America.

About 1,000 Kenyans turned out on Thursday for a four-hour conference in Washington at which Mr Kimunya listened to expatriates' concerns while outlining government initiatives to ease the transfer of money from the United States to Kenya.

Kenyans attending the event expressed "a desire to re-engage back home in terms of exchanging ideas, participating politically through the voting system and investing in the economy," Mr Kimunya said.

He attended another conference with Kenyan expatriates in Atlanta on Friday and Saturday and is scheduled to meet next week with Kenyans in the state of Minnesota and in the Canadian cities Toronto and Ottawa.

Mr Kimunya is telling his audiences that the Kenya Investment Authority has simplified procedures for investing in the private sector at home while simultaneously strengthening safeguards against money-laundering.

To coincide with the minister's meetings with Kenyans in the Diaspora, the Postal Corporation of Kenya last week officially launched PostaPay, a money transfer system. Mr Kimunya says PostaPay offers a cheaper alternative to Western Union for Kenyans who want to wire money back home.

Noting that more than half of the roughly one million Kenyans living in North America and Europe earn comfortable incomes, Mr Kimunya suggests in his speeches that they can "potentially invest huge sums" in Kenya. He says it is realistic to expect overseas Kenyans to soon be sending $2 billion a year to recipients at home.

Mr Kimunya told the Sunday Nation that he is advising Kenyans in North America to put their money in four growth sectors: Information technology, energy, tourism facilities and agricultural exports. Opportunities are especially attractive in the energy sector, he says, because the government is working to deliver power to the 85 per cent of Kenyans not connected to the national grid.

In seeking to facilitate greater investments by Kenyans abroad, Mr Kimunya says his ministry is studying India's success in building its information technology sector largely on the basis of funding by expatriates. Other model systems, including those in the Philippines and Ireland, are being studied as well, Mr Kimunya adds.

"We're picking the best from across the globe," he says.