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Expatriate Indians in GCC countries remit USD 5 bn annually

 Dubai Aug 9 (UNI) Over four million expatriate Indians living in the Gulf Cooperation Council states send home a staggering five billion US dollars annually as remittances, a new study has said.

 According to it, foreign workers send a total of USD 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 USD 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 USD 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 Oma.

 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.