Key Points
Inward remittances, or the money they send back to their families and relatives in India, bolster India's economy by fattening its foreign exchange reserves and ensure India's macroeconomic stability..
Announcing the rise in reserves yesterday, Das said that the countrys current account deficit (the vale of import of goods and services exceeding the value of exports as a percentage of the GDP) has narrowed to 2.2% in Q4 from 3.7% in Q2 because of a lower merchandise trade deficit and robust growth in services exports..
With a share of 23 percent of total remittances, the United States has surpassed the United Arab Emirates as the top source country for India's remittances in 202021, says the World Bank report..
Remittances have benefitted from a gradual shift in Indian migrants job profiles from low-skilled, informal employment in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries to high-skilled jobs in high-income countries such as the US, the UK, and those in East Asia (Singapore, Japan, Australia, New Zealand)...
Between 201617 and 202021, the share of remittances from the US, the UK, and Singapore increased from 26 percent to over 36 percent, while the share from the five GCC countries (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar) dropped from 54 to 28 percent, according to an RBI survey..
