India tops the world in remittance inflow
Published Date: Friday, Sep 28, 2012
The World Bank, on the 27th of April 2012, released a report stating the rise in flow of remittances into India by $ 5.8bn more than earlier forecasts to $ 63.7 bn. in 2011, marginally more than China’s total of $ 62.5 bn. The Bank stated the reasons for this rise as “primarily due to a weak rupee and robust economic activity in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, which are major destinations of recent migrants”. While this puts India at the top in terms of remittance receipts for 2011, this rise can be juxtaposed with the Reserve Bank of India’s report in the end of March 2009, which documented a rise in flow of remittances under similar circumstances, the major sources of remittances then being North America (38% of total remittances) and the Gulf and East Asian countries (32%). The Reserve Bank also charted the average end usage pattern of the remittances flows, with 61% of remittances being used for family maintenance, 20% being deposited in banks and 4 and 3% being used for investments in land/ property and equity shares respectively. It will be interesting to see if the rise in volume of remittances has changed this pattern at all.