Pakistan’s remittances likely to increase by 9%: World Bank

November 2, 2020

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Despite the overall negative impact of the Covid-19 epidemic, a new World Bank report predicts that foreign remittances to Pakistan will grow by about 9 percent in 2020 to around $ 24 billion, which Foreig based Pakistani’s use as an official way to send money home.

“The negative impact of the global economic downturn caused by the Covid virus has been offset to some extent by redirecting remittances from unofficial channels to official ones due to the difficulty of manually transferring money in light of travel restrictions, as well as incentives for transferring remittances,” statement. The report was published in the World Bank’s Migration and Development Review.

For example, a report entitled “ Phase Two of the Covid-19 Crisis Through the Lens of Migration ” indicates that Pakistan introduced tax breaks in July 2020, under which tax withholdings were exempted from withdrawing cash, issuing banking instruments or transfers from local faces. … Bank account. The tax credit was limited to the amount of transfers received from abroad to this account during the year.

While South Asia was the least expensive region to remitt $ 200 in the third quarter of 2020, costs topped 10 percent in some areas from Japan, South Africa and Thailand and Pakistan to Afghanistan, the report said.

Some of the less expensive corridors, including those from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and Singapore, and the India-Nepal corridor, had costs below the SDG target of 3%. This may be due to high volumes, competitive markets and technology diffusion.

The report says that remittances to rest of South Asia are expected to experience a sustained decline of 4 per cent in 2020 and 11 percent in 2021. The slowdown in remittances to South Asia is associated with a prolonged slowdown in the global economy due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. …

With the pandemic likely to continue into 2021, the previously predicted V-shaped recovery now looks unlikely. This could directly affect the outflow of remittances from the US, UK, GCC countries and the European Union countries to South Asia, the report says.

In terms of migration trends, the report says the coronavirus crisis has affected international and internal migration in the South Asia region. Many international migrants, especially those from the GCC countries, have returned to countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Governments had to evacuate some migrants.

The flows of migrants from the region also suffered negatively. Pakistan has only 179,487 immigrants between January and September 2020, up from 625,203 in 2019.