‘Remittances to India recorded at $116,000 in FY16’

KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Wednesday said workers’ remittances from Pakistan to India were $116,000 in the last fiscal year of 2015/16.

“The actual Balance of Payments data shows that outflow of workers’ remittances from Pakistan to India were $116,000 in 2015/16 and the inflows from India to Pakistan were $329,000,” the central bank said in a statement.

The central bank, while rejecting the reports that $4.9 billion was remitted to India, said the number was given in Migration and Remittances Factbook 2016 prepared by the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development.   

“At the outset, it must be noted that the Factbook data on bilateral remittance flows are estimates (not the actual flows), which are based on a number of assumptions about migrant stock, per worker income, etc.,” the statement said.

“The methodology used to estimate these numbers is based on a World Bank’s Working Paper by Ratha, Dilip, and William Shaw (South-South migration and remittances. No. 102. World Bank Publications, 2007).” 

The central bank said the methodology had serious issues, particularly in case of Pakistan, as also acknowledged by the authors themselves, stating that interpreting the meaning of migrant stocks also presents some difficulties. 

Pakistanis in India and Russians in Ukraine became migrants following partition of the original country. “Thus the study is clearly flawed as the migrants at the time of Indo-Pak partition in 1947 had become citizens of Pakistan,” the central bank said.