India first in world to hit $100 billion 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 that had said the same thing. Though remittances to the rest of the South Asian countries declined by 10 per cent, these rose by 12 per cent in India’s case, it said. India was the largest remittance receiving country in 2021 as well while Mexico was second and China third. India received remittances worth over $89 billion in 2021, about 8 per cent higher than $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, 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 could be promoted across the globe. For the current year too, India’s inbound remittances would continue to rise as the South Asia region has one of the lowest transaction costs in the world.