He elaborated that earlier a number of overseas Pakistanis used to bring remittances in the form of hard cash along with them when they visited their families before the Covid-19 outbreak. Besides, the remittances continued to surge with the offer of better rupee-dollar exchange rate to the recipients in Pakistan and increased commission to international and domestic financial institutions on the transfer of remittances to Pakistan under the central bank’s Pakistan Remittances Initiative (PRI), he said. “Any slowdown in the receipt of workers’ remittances will be offset by the Roshan Digital Account (RDA) - which is being opened by overseas Pakistanis in Pakistani banks. So far, over 40,000 overseas Pakistanis have opened RDA over the past couple of months. Aslam estimated that total remittances would be somewhere between $25 billion and $25.5 billion in FY21 compared to $23.10 billion in the previous fiscal year.

Source: The Express Tribune November 13, 2020 03:45 UTC