Staff Reporter
Karachi
Overseas Pakistani workers remitted US$ 9,298.57 million in the first five months (July to November) of FY20, compared with US$ 9,281.94 million received during the same period in the preceding year. During November 2019, the inflow of workers remittances amounted to US$ 1,819.66 million, which is 9.05% lower than October 2019 and 9.35% higher than November 2018.
The country wise details for the month of November 2019 show that inflows from Saudi Arabia, UAE, USA, UK, GCC countries (including Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman) and EU countries amounted to US$ 407.48 million, US$ 383.77 million, US$ 298.64 million, US$ 285.56 million, US$ 172.25 million and US$ 52.76 million respectively compared with the inflow of US$ 395.12 million, US$ 350.35 million, US$ 268.32 million, US$ 246.78 million, US$ 153.51 million and US$ 42.22 million respectively in November 2018.
Remittances received from Malaysia, Norway, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Japan and other countries during November 2019 amounted to US$ 219.19 million together as against US$ 207.74 million received in November 2018.
Meanwhile, the State Bank of Pakistan has received US $1.3 billion from Asian Development Bank (ADB) in connection with the policy based lending committed by ADB to support Pakistan’s budget and energy sector reforms, said a spokesman of SBP on Tuesday.
With this inflow of foreign currency, the central bank’s foreign exchange reserves have swelled to over $10 billion.
Earlier this week, Pakistan and the ADB had signed two loan programme amounting to US $1.3 billion.
The loan programmes aim at improving exchange rate management, strengthen public financial management to mobilize more revenues, restore allocated efficiency of scarce public resource, address the power sector pricing issues and reduce the social impacts of macroeconomic stability measures by improved targeting and transparency of existing social protection programmes.
The loan agreements were signed by Secretary, Economic Affairs Division, Dr Syed Pervaiz Abbas and Country Director ADB Ms Xiaohong Yang and were witnessed by Minister for Economic Affairs, Muhammad Hammad Azhar.
