Remittances Fall 11% in September to $2.2 Billion

Remittances sent by overseas Pakistanis declined by 11 percent to $2.2 billion in September 2023 compared to inflows of $2.48 billion registered in the same month last year.

However, on a month-on-month basis, the inflows in September 2023 increased by 5 percent over inflows of $2.09 billion registered in August 2023, according to the data on remittances released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).

During Sep 2023, workers’ remittances recorded an inflow of US$2.2 billion, showing an increase of 5.3 percent compared to the previous month.
For details see https://t.co/rPOvn9CTjfhttps://t.co/7XBd4uNES4#SBPRemittances pic.twitter.com/qenzCIvWUI

— SBP (@StateBank_Pak) October 10, 2023

A breakdown of the numbers shows that the highest inflows were registered from Saudi Arabia, coming in at $538 million, followed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at $400 million, the United Kingdom (UK) at $311 million, European Union (EU) countries at $269 million, and the United States (US) at $263 million.

The inflows from Saudi Arabia were down 15 percent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis, while the inflows from UAE, and the US were down by 16 percent and 6 percent respectively. However, inflows from European Union (EU) countries registered an increase of 4 percent while that from the UK increased by 1 percent.

During the first quarter of the fiscal year 2023-24 (1QFY24), remittances stood at $6.33 billion, down 20 percent compared to remittances of $7.89 billion registered in the same period of the previous fiscal year.

There was an expectation that remittances would register a substantial increase during September as the open market rate of the US Dollar dropped by nearly Rs. 50 during the month. However, the marginal increase on a month-on-month basis does little to reflect a significant uptick in inflows.