India first country to hit $100 billion annually in remittances

New Delhi, January 10

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said remittances sent to the country by overseas Indians were about $100 billion for the year 2022, an increase of 12 per cent in one year.

The Minister was quoting from last month’s World Bank report whichhad said India will be the first country in the world to receive $ 100 billion from remittances during 2022. Though remittances to the rest of the South Asian countries declined by 10 per cent, they rose by 12 per cent in India’s case, it said.

India was the largest remittance receiving country in 2021 as while Mexico was second and China third. India received remittances worth over $ 89 billion in 2021 which was a healthy 8 per cent higher than the $ 82.73 billion in 2020. Despite the world having been affected badly by Covid in 2020, the remittances in that year were a shade over the $ 82.69 billion in the non Covid year of 2019. Some of the increase is accounted for by the falling value of the rupee vis-à-vis the dollar.

Speaking at a session during the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) convention in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore city, she described NRIs as the“real ambassadors of India” and appealed to them to use made in India products and services as far as possible so that the country’s individual brand can be promoted across the globe.

For the current year too, India’s inbound remittances will continue to rise, as the South Asia region has one of the lowest transaction costs in the world. Globally, the average cost of sending $ 200 was 6 per but it was the cheapest to send money to South Asia (4.3 per cent) and most expensive to send to Sub-Saharan Africa (7.8 per cent).