GCC expats remit $5 bn annually in India

DUBAI: Over four million expatriate Indians staying in the Gulf Cooperation Council states send home a staggering $5 billion annually as remittances, according to a study.

According to it, foreign workers send a total $27 billion annually, which is almost equal to nine per cent of GCC states' GDP each year.

There are 13 million expats in the GCC countries which account for 70 per cent of the workforce. Some expect the number to reach 18 million by 2017, according to a report in the Gulf News.

The largest expatriate communities in the GCC are from India, Pakistan, Egypt, Yemen and Bangladesh.

N Janardhan, a political analyst at the Gulf Research Centre (GRC), which conducted the study, said that India and Pakistan together received about $ 60 billion in remittances between 1993 and 2002.

The Asian workforce represents some 78 per cent of the total expatriate workforce in the UAE. Remittances worldwide sent home by workers abroad touched $ 232 billion in 2005, with India and China receiving the highest.

Expats comprise 88 per cent of the workforce in the UAE compared with 83 per cent in Qatar, 81 per cent in Kuwait, 72 per cent in Saudi Arabia, 55 per cent in Bahrain and 54 per cent in Oman.

The lion's share of the transfers originate from Saudi Arabia, which accounts for 63 per cent of all remittances.

"The high remittances of expatriates from the UAE running into several billion dirhams annually impacts negatively on the UAE's GDP and balance of payments," said the report.