THE recent shift in demand of skilled workers abroad is changing the professional profile of overseas Pakistanis.

The emigration of 1.6 million workers, particularly of professionals with a wide range of skills over the five years ending 2010, has pushed the remittances to a record level.

Remittances surged more than 100 per cent in the last four fiscal years from $5.5 billion in FY07 to $11.2 billion in FY11 for a host of reasons. The most important being that the younger generation of expatriate Pakistanis had entered into more modern professions. And those who left Pakistan for earning a livelihood abroad in mid-2000s were equipped with new sets of professional skills.

According to the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment, more than 1.6 million Pakistanis went abroad for earning a livelihood over the last five years bringing the total number of expatriates to over seven million from 5.5 million in 2005.

“Those US-born Pakistanis who graduated from universities after 2000 joined in the fields of pharmacy, food technology, environmental sciences and software development. Many of them also set up businesses with the help of friends and relatives sitting far away in Pakistan, the UK or in the Middle East but linked up through internet,” according to a senior official of the ministry of overseas Pakistanis.

“That is one of the reasons why home remittances from the US rose to $2 billion in FY11 from $1.46 billion in FY07 (with an annual average growth of 27 per cent) even though only a few thousand Pakistanis went there for jobs during these years.”

He recalled that when Pakistan Remittances Initiative was being evolved back in 2009 officials of his ministry and of the State Bank of Pakistan had traced new trends in professional profiles of overseas Pakistanis along with changes in the composition of export of manpower. Foreign missions in some host countries of Pakistani diaspora had provided valuable inputs. Data analysis show that export of manpower is now directed more towards Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, UK, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, South Africa and Japan rather than the US and European Union countries.

“But we continue to get sizable home remittances from some EU countries like Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Ireland and two Scandinavian countries— Norway and Switzerland— both because of historical presence of Pakistanis there and also because their new generations have taken up more rewarding jobs or have set up their own businesses.”

However, the fact that Canada and Australia have attracted a large number of Pakistani professionals in the last five years through their immigration and business visa schemes shows up in phenomenal growth in remittances from these countries.Remittances from Canada more than doubled from $87 million in FY07 to $184 million in FY11 and remittances from Australia almost tripled during this period from $31 million to $89 million.

Mr Hanif Rinch of Pakistan Overseas Employment Promoters Association—a caucus of recruiting agents—says home remittances from Australia is growing faster because tens of thousands of young Pakistanis who are there for higher education are making enough money on high-tech part-time jobs.

He says that 1.5 million Pakistanis in Saudi Arabia now outnumber all foreign nationals except Indians (1.6m). And over the years their professional profiles have changed for the better. A large number of Pakistani doctors, surgeons, environmental scientists, industrial health and safety managers, geologists, petroleum engineers, educators, bankers and chartered accountants are working in Jeddah, Riyadh, Makkah, Madina, Dammam and Dhahran.

As new large hospitals and universities sprang up in Saudi Arabia during last six years, thousands of Pakistani medical professionals including doctors and nurses went there creating a shortage back home. And as the kingdom increased spending on infrastructure projects, construction industry, professionals from across Pakistan as well as from Dubai (where real estate business took a hit in recent years) found new jobs in major Saudi cities.

The list of highly skilled Pakistani workers earning a livelihood in Saudi Arabia is also long. Project managers, machinery operators, hotel and hospitality service providers, computer system analysts/programmers and school teachers of Pakistani origin all are working in public and private sectors there.

All these factors have contributed to a phenomenal growth in remittances from Saudi Arabia from just one billion dollars in FY07 to $2.67 billion in FY11 making this brotherly Muslim country the biggest source of remittances followed by the UAE, the US and the UK.

According to the estimates of Overseas Pakistanis Foundation, the UAE is also host to 1.5 million Pakistanis. And whereas most of them still fall into low-skilled manual labour and construction workers, about 6000 small and medium sized companies owned partly by Pakistanis have employed all cadres of Pakistani professionals and highly skilled people—trading experts, bankers, chartered accountants, account managers, IT professionals, fund managers, workers in multimode transport networks etc.

In fact, a large number of Pakistani companies now have their offices in Dubai to deal with international customers and they are manned mainly by Pakistani expatriates. Small wonder than the inflow of home remittances from the UAE has almost tripled in last four fiscal years from $866 million to $2.6 billion.

The list of countries hosting overseas Pakistanis in large numbers is long and varied. But the bulk of Pakistani manpower is stationed in the US, the UK, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and these are the countries minus the US where large number of Pakistanis have gone in recent years to find jobs.

Since GCC countries somewhat escaped much of the ill effects of global recession and are busy reshaping their economies with more focus on public sector, social and physical infrastructure projects, Pakistanis who migrated there in the recent past are earning enough foreign exchange.

That together with structural changes in professional profiles of Pakistanis already living there, explains at least partly, the recent growth in home remittances. —Mohiuddin Aazim