Workers’ remittances remain up by 24.4 % to 2.095 bln in August

KARACHI :The remittances sent by overseas Pakistanis reached to $ 2.095 billion during the month of August 2020, showing 24.4 percent increase over the same month of last year, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) reported Monday.This is the third month in row when workers’ remittances remained above $2 billion, according to latest data of the bank, which termed the remittance figure largely in line with SBP projections. Over the last three months, remittances reached an unprecedented level of $7.3 billion, showing 37.2 percent higher than the same period last year. The efforts under the Pakistan Remittances Initiative (PRI) and the gradual re-opening of businesses in major host countries such as Middle East, Europe and United States contributed to this increase, the central bank said in a statement. The top three originating countries for remittances in August included Saudi Arabia with remittances of $0.593 billion, followed by UAE with $0.410 billion and UK with $0.302 billion remittances. On month-on-month basis, the remittances were 24.3 percent lower than the record level of remittances of $ 2.768 billion posted in July, mainly reflecting the usual seasonal decline in the post Eid-al-Adha period.