Pakistan sent $5 billion remittances to India in 2015: World Bank
Connections and funds find a way despite tensions between the two sides
LAHORE (Web Desk) – World Bank has stated, what comes as a humongous figure, Pakistan sent around $5 billion to India as remittances in 2015, Dunya News reported Thursday.
The international bank has stated the number is going up with every passing year. It should be noted here that direct remittances between the two neighbours is restricted.
According to an estimate, around 1.4 million India-born people live in Pakistan while 1.1 million Pakistan-born living in India. The discussion takes us back to the colonial times as thousands of families migrated to safer places owing to violence and bloodshed that followed the separation in 1947.
The bank stated that the money flows both ways. Pakistan received remittances worth $2 billion from India.
A story titled “The Difference between Indian and Chinese Migrants” that was published in the Wall Street Journal earlier not only shocked the readers but raised serious questions. One of the major concerns was the usage of the money. Could it be terror funding?
However, Word Bank’s rough statistics have cleared the queries.
Lead economist at the World Bank, Dilip Ratha said that even the World Bank has “part history and part mystery” answer when it comes to such remittances.
The economist said that remittances around the globe are hard to trace as funds go through various countries before they reach their destination. The World Bank could only make a close guess about $72 billion remittances in India last year.
The bank has built a model that takes into account country’s population, cost of living there, origin of its immigrants and average incomes to draw an idea over remittances’ flow.
Ratha said that the origin of the funds that added to India and Pakistan’s remittances is “much less sinister.”
One may ask why?
It is because, as mentioned above, millions of family connections are there between the two neighbouring countries. The reason for that is the history of the subcontinent, highlighting the Indo-Pak separation.
Connections and funds find a way despite tensions between the two sides.
