THIS refers to a news report that the remittances of the first five months of the fiscal year (2018-2019) had been up by $1 billion compared to the previous fiscal year’s first five months.

That averages for $200 million per month. It is important to know that apart from the Pakistani diaspora living in the five top remittance sending countries — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, US, UK and Malaysia — to Pakistan, there is another diaspora that send millions of dollars to this country — Pakistan-Afghan diaspora.

However, owing to too many legal requirements on the part of Pakistani authorities they find it difficult to send money through the banking, and, instead, opt for the less complicated way — hundi or hawala system.

Moreover, it is not the taxes charged or the source of finance requirement which hinders them to send the money by the legal channel. Instead, they are discouraged from sending through banking channels because they don’t have Pakistani national identity cards or passports.

The government should look into this matter and do the needful. They do have Afghan citizen cards or passports, so why not incentivise them so that they can send more and more remittances through our banking channel and increases our overall remittance influx.

Rehan Hamid

Peshawar

Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2019