RIZWAN BHATTI
KARACHI: The country missed home remittances target of $20.7 billion for the last fiscal year 2017-18 (FY18).
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Tuesday reported that overall, overseas Pakistani workers remitted $19.6 billion during FY18 compared with $19.351 billion received during the same period in the preceding year (FY17), showing a growth of 1.4 percent.
Although, remittances, arrived in FY18, are higher than previous year, but less than the actual target of $20.7 billion set by the federal government for the last fiscal year.
Economists said that a major decline has been witnessed from Saudi Arabia - Pakistan’s largest remittances corridor. However, the decline in home remittance inflows from Saudi Arabia has been offset by higher inflows from other countries, particularly advanced western economies.
Labor policies in the Saudi Arabia are becoming more stringent for foreign workers. Most important is the job nationalization drive, which aims to replace expatriate workers with Saudi citizens, because of which home remittances from Saudi Arabia posted a massive decline, they added.
The federal government had taken several steps to promote home remittances through legal channel and launched “Asaan Remittance Account” in December last year. However, the country has missed the home remittances target by over one billion dollars during last fiscal year. According to SBP, remittance inflows from the US and the UK increased by 11 percent and 18 percent, respectively during last fiscal year. Home remittance inflows amounting to $2.714 billion were arrived from the US and some $2.763 billion from the UK during FY18.
On the contrary, workers’ remittance inflows from Saudi Arabia declined by 11 percent to $4.858 billion in FY18 against $5.469 billion arrived in FY17.
Month-on-month basis, during June 2018, the remittances inflows amounted to $1.594 billion compared to $1.771 billion during May 2018, depicting a decline of $ 177 million.
The country-wise details for June 2018 show that inflows from Saudi Arabia, UAE, USA, UK, GCC countries (including Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman) and EU countries amounted to $336.61 million, $340.55 million, $248.79 million, $245.10 million, $163.53 million and $62.14 million, respectively compared with the inflow of $438.07 million, $414.25 million, $265.52 million, $252.50 million, $232.89 million and $56.97 million, respectively in June 2017. Remittances received from Malaysia, Norway, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Japan and other countries during June 2018 amounted to $197.69 million together against $180.04 million received in June 2017.
