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). 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. Pakistani registered its highest every remittance inflows in April last year, coming in at $3.1 billion. However, in the last 12 months, remittances have dropped significantly and have crossed the $2.5 billion mark just once (in March 2023).