8MFY15: Remittances amount to $11.7 billion

Register growth of 14.6% year-on-year.

KARACHI:

Overseas Pakistanis sent remittances amounting to $11.7 billion in the first eight months of 2014-15, which translates into a year-on-year increase of 14.6%, according to data released by the State Bank of Pakistan on Tuesday.

Remittances amounted to $10.2 billion over the same eight-month period of the preceding fiscal year.

Pakistanis based in foreign countries sent home $1.4 billion last month, which is 1% higher than the remittances received in the preceding month of January.

Inflows from Saudi Arabia were the largest source of remittances in the first eight months of 2014-15. They amounted to $3.5 billion in July-February, up 19.9% from the same eight months of 2013-14.



Remittances received in July-February from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) increased 25.2% to $2.5 billion on a year-on-year basis. Inflows from the UAE registered the largest increase from any major remittance-sending country during the last eight months.

Remittances from the United States and the United Kingdom remained $1.6 billion and $1.5 billion, respectively, in July-February. The year-on-year increase in remittances from the US and the UK has been 2.7% each.

Remittances from Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, excluding Saudi Arabia and the UAE, clocked up at $1.3 billion in July-February, which is 14.3% higher than the remittances received from these countries in the same period of the preceding fiscal year.

Remittances from Kuwait, in the first eight months of 2014-15, equalled to $491.4 million while those from Oman, Bahrain and Qatar amounted to $423 million, $235.7 million and $214.3 million, respectively.

Remittances received from Norway, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Japan and ‘other countries’ during February amounted to $85 million as opposed to remittances of $82 million received in the same month of the preceding fiscal year.

In the last fiscal year, overseas Pakistanis sent home $15.8 billion, which was 13.7% higher than the remittances of $13.9 billion received in 2012-13.

The monthly average of remittances during the July-February of 2014-15 remained $1.46 billion, which was up 14.6% from the monthly average of remittances received during the same months of 2013-14.

Remittances in the first eight months of the current fiscal year increased regardless of the strong wave of political instability that began in August with sit-ins by opposition parties and fizzled out after the attack on Army Public School in December.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 11^th, 2015.

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