ISLAMABAD (INP): The Pakistan Economy Watch (PEW) on Saturday said coronavirus has also infected the booming business of illegal money transfer called hundi.
Now expatriates have started preferring legal banking channels for sending money which is also benefitting country, said Brig. (retd) Aslam Khan, Chairman Pakistan Economy Watch.
He said that annually Pakistan receives almost 22 billion dollars of remittances through banking channels while almost ten billion dollars find its way in the country through non-banking channels.
The coronavirus has damaged hundi business and now many Pakistanis are preferring legal channels and the government should encourage them to boost remittances by ten billion dollars per annum, he said.
Aslam Khan said that the World Bank has projected a fall of 23 percent in the remittances but Pakistan received 16 percent more remittances in February while in March the score was nine percent better than in 2019.
Increasing remittances amid a global slowdown and loss of many jobs indicate that legal channels are being preferred by overseas Pakistan, therefore the government should not waste any time to bank on the opportunity, he said. He said that earlier bulk of remittances were being received from oil-exporting countries but now overdependence on the Arab nations has been tackled through diversification which is a very good development.
Although the use of digital instruments for sending remittances is increasing, poorer and irregular migrants often lack access to online services which should be tackled by our authorities without delay.
