ISLAMABAD: Zafar Paracha, General Secretary of the Exchange Companies Association of Pakistan, said in a statement on Monday that the inflow of remittances into Pakistan through exchange companies has witnessed a rise of 10 to 15 percent following the recent crackdown.
He said that the crackdown launched by authorities has proved to be the most effective tool to bolster the country’s foreign reserves.
Paracha said that we have witnessed a substantial rise in remittances flowing into the country through exchange companies, whose daily exchange values have been increased to 50 million dollars after the recent crackdown that helped us recover more than 900 million dollars in just a couple of months from the culprits dealing in the black market.
The black-market forex trade, or, in other words, remittances flowing into Pakistan through unregulated money operators like hawala and hundi, has caused a massive loss of over 4 billion dollars to the country in FY23. Its foreign reserves dropped from 12.9 billion dollars to an alarming 12.6 billion dollars and are even decreasing further due to the black-market flow of remittances.
Paracha further said that the ongoing nationwide crackdown against unlawful money operators provides hope to the country’s depleting foreign reserves, although the dire need to bring awareness among overseas Pakistanis to abstain from using unregulated channels remains there.
Black Market in Pakistan
Commenting on the problem of black-market forex trade, CEO of ACE Money Transfer Rashid Ashraf said that most Pakistani diasporas turn towards informal channels like hawala and hundi so as to avoid taxes and formal procedures, which they wrongly consider to be tricky and complex. Consequently, the money that comes through unregulated channels assists different crimes and terror financing while putting Pakistani expats’ hard-earned money at stake.
