Cover Stories - Brisk movement of Pakistan's foreign remittances.

• Author: Asghar, Arooj
• Position: Cover story

Byline: Arooj Asghar

Remittances have been playing a very significant role for the overall economic development of Pakistan. Therefore, it is important to explore the actual remittance income and its impact on overall economy of Pakistan. Recently, the Middle East has suffered job crisis, the job opportunities are shrinking for the last few years and there are chances that remittances from the Middle East will reduce. As a result, the Government of Pakistan is now facing tremendous challenges to send people abroad for employment.

Remittances have already been emerged as a prime driving force to the economic growth and poverty alleviation in Pakistan. Though jobs in the Middle East are reducing, yet the amount of remittance and the numbers of migrant workers have been increasing gradually. The export of manpower is one of the most significant foreign currency earning sectors of Pakistan. It contributes our national economy in a large measure by increasing foreign exchange reserve, per capita income and employment opportunities.

Overseas Pakistani workers remitted USD 17,875.23 million in first 10 months (July to April) of FY19, showing a growth of 8.45 percent compared with USD16,481.82 million received during the same period in the preceding year. During April 2019, the inflow of worker's remittances amounted to USD 1,778.90 million, which is 2 percent higher than March 2019 and 6 percent higher than April 2018, according to a data released by State Bank of Pakistan. The country wise details for the month of April 2019 show that inflows from Saudi Arabia, UAE, USA, UK, GCC countries (including Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman) and EU countries amounted to USD 427.82 million, USD 372.43 million, USD 269.56 million, USD 280.02 million, USD 175.44million and USD 48.19 million respectively compared with the inflow of USD 399.56 million, USD 362.40 million, USD 250.91 million, USD 245.85 million, USD 167.68 million and USD 54.75 million respectively in April 2018.

Remittances received from Malaysia, Norway, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Japan and other countries during April 2019 amounted to USD 205.43 million together as against USD 197.72 million received in April 2018.

According to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), among the migrant workers, more than 50 percent have gone to abroad by lending money from others or by selling land to others. A large part of these migrant workers are unskilled or semi-skilled. As a result, they have sent a...