State Bank of Pakistan says that Overseas Pakistani workers’ remittances declined by US$ 313.34 million in first eight months (July to February) of FY17.
Overseas Pakistani workers remitted US$ 12,363.3 million from July 2016 till February 2017, compared with US$ 12,676.64 million received during the same period in the preceding year.
During February 2017, the inflow of worker’s remittances amounted to US$ 1,416.92 million, which is 4.7% lower than January 2017 and 6.9% less than February 2016.
The country wise details for the month of February 2017 are as following:
- Saudi Arabia:Â US$ 404.39 (US$ 475.07 million in Feb 16)
- UAE: US$ 320.24 million (US$ 320.37 million in Feb 16)
- USA: US$ 177.76 million (US$ 182.17 million in Feb 16)
- UK: US$ 170.55 million: US$ 168.2 million (US$ 179.65 million in Feb 16)
- GCC countries (including Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman): US$ 168.2 million (US$ 197.63 million in Feb 16)
- EU: US$ 31.7 million (US$ 35.37 million in Feb 16)
Remittances received from Norway, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Japan and other countries during February 2017 amounted to US$144.08 million together as against US$131.66 million received in February 2016.
Remittances will drop to zero very soon.
1- Difference is bank vs hundi transfer is 5-6% minimum.
2- Attitude of Banks is very non-professional as if they are giving funds as charity to beneficiaries and to sender they do not facilitate with technology and smoothing the transfer.
3- Transfers via banks never take minutes or hours but days to reach instead of their tall claims.
4- If you transfer to your own account and then to 5 beneficaries you have to pay taxes 5 times, while if you do direct transfers there is no such tax; nobody looked into this. No exemption for overseas Pakistanis.
5- If you point a hundi or hawala (money laundering) point of exchange in Pakistan especially in KPK and Sindh which are heavens no action is ever taken by respective provincial governments.
6- Trillions of Rs. flow out of Pakistan from KPK alone, if you want to transfer any X amount out of Pakistan services are available in Pakistan.
7- Common overseas Pakistanis up to 90% send remittances via hundi without caring that your country, nation, economy suffers and declines due to this way of sending remittance. There is no other way possible in my knowledge for outflow of black money from Pakistan. Every Pakistani wants to corruption to be eridicated but without caring how both sender and remittance beneficiary are involved and are support black money market to damage Pakistani economy.
8- Overseas you will see mostly Indians, Phillipinos and Nepalis in money exchanges and only a few Pakistanis as later prefer sending money via hundi /hawala.
Hum kuch takkon ky liye mulk bech rahay hain and we want farishtay to rule us.
All this cannot be fixed unless we use latest technology for easier and convenient transactions.
In china,hardly anyone uses cash and all money is exchanged via apps based on qr codes.
Thus documenting and providing ease at the same time.
Traditional banking is slowly dying. In future, these banks will struggle to attract customers if they don’t evolve.
bhai China me bhi Pakistani hundi se peise magwate they,
Bhai but you have to realize that most of the people who do use these hundi walas are common labourers who are working very hard there and earn very little in return. Hardly making ends meet. Thus they try to save each and every rupee that they possibly could.
They are not educated about taxes and such and i can say with quite confidence care more about the needs of their family than the system.
I am strictly not advocating tax evasion and simply state the other side of the story. The “developed” countries we often talk about pay a minimum of 8$/hour wage to even their lowest ranked employees while in KSA ,UAE and such, these people have to work tirelessly each day for over 12 hours to earn approx. 450 to 600$ per month which hardly amounts to 20$ a day.
u r also missing one very important piece of puzzle why people resort to such means of transfer. Many Pakistanis get their dollar transfer blocked by American banks for no reason. They just flag their names. I had this problem very often during my study abroad period and thus banks deducted fee many times and it is not small amount 30 USD per transaction. I was able to get passed by this by submitting passport photocopy to bank but just imagine u r tight on budget and ur money does not arrive or get reduced from hidden charges.
That point, i was honestly not aware of before. Else i’d have factored it in as well.
The other main contributing factor is also that most of the Pakistani workforce in the Gulf region is being laid off and are being sent home. New working policies in Saudi & UAE are not favorable for foreign workers esp for non-skilled Pakistani labor and they are being replaced by lower wage working nations like Bengalis and Philippines.
More than that, most gulf countries are now dead against Pakistan every since we refused to send our soldiers to die for tem (as we had always done in the past) in the mess of their own making in Yemen.
As a result they are doing a Pakistani-Purge in Middle East where Pakistani ko “chun chun” kay terminate kiya ja raha hai. . .
Only those who are essential and cannot be replaced even by four or five Indians or Egyptians are left . . .but slowly and surely they will also be kicked out. It is common for Pakistanis to hear “Go back and work on your CPEC!!”
So that is the second reason . . .because they are scared that their ports and their cities will be ruined because of CPEC, hence they are trying to kill our remittances with Indian collusion by hitting our main source of foreign exchange.
Except for our leadership who owns half od Dubai and Jeddah, rest of the ordinary workers in the Middle East can see this clear as day!
Its time we too realize what is happening — a re-alignment of interests and the Middle East interests now lie with India not Pakistan.
India makes US$80bilionfrom remittances in the middle east — indian defense budget? US$ 80 bn. . .coincidence?
GCC nations are stooges of the west. These same nations gave us these jihad factories and now they are aligned with India because west wants them to do so. GCC nations know their time is limited as oil is no longer imported in huge quantities by western countries as before, except when it is way too cheap.
KPK or sindh ka naam to le liya tumny, London flates ki raseedan kado tussi….
Or yeh bhi bata dena k london flates, jeddah factory, india me factories wagera konsy sayyaray ki makhlooq ki milkiyat me aati hain
*** go ___ GOooooooOOOoooOOOOooOOO
State Bank and FBR want to even peek into your a55 to see if you have any money hiding there which they can re-tax again and again and again. Tax on tax is illegal but practiced regularly practically and neither courts nor FBR care since it yields the government more money out of customer pockets.
Laughingly, even taking out your own legit hard earned money from banks results in WH tax which FBR never refunds. If they were sincere about taxation reforms, they would automatically refund any and all refundable amount once the tax return is filed at the end of fiscal year. After all, that portion (all taxes previously paid in the form of advance taxes, etc) of the economy is fully documented now.
Legal tax payers don’t get any benefits and get screwed twice; once from the front via tax at source (a.k.a. income tax) and then again through the back via indirect taxation. They get no relief, no perks and no benefits or facilities. They have no state sponsored insurance for their hard earned and bought assets, social security, disability or health coverage of any kind for paying taxes. Tax evaders only have to pay indirect taxes and be done with it.
FBR thinks and acts like all taxpayers are thieves and relentlessly harasses them with malafide intent. All actions to bring more non-taxpayers, and thieves sitting in parliament and senate and elsewhere in government are failures and deliberately sabotaged to be ineffective. Even PM Nawaz and his Finance Secretary Dar (who was (and probably still is) a money launderer by his own admission) are biggest thieves and Panama/Bahama beneficiaries.
If the system is so visibly rotten from top to bottom, why would any sane person trust it?