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Since the late 1970s, overseas migration and resulting remittances have had a far-reaching effect at the Pakistan economy. A vital message of this record is that whilst foreign places migration and remittances will keep playing a significant role in shaping Pakistan’s economy, its overall importance as an engine of economic growth and easing pressures on the employment and labour market situation and providing the balance of payment support will gradually decrease mainly as the rate of a boom of remittances inevitably declines (from a fifteen-fold boom throughout 2000-2020). Yet at the same time, it is vital that Pakistan must put in area policies, mechanisms and institutions that will ensure that remittances flow via official channels, increase competitiveness and earnings thru upskilling of potential migrants in search of employment abroad, aggressively searching for out new markets as industrialized countries (including EU and Japan) face labour shortages due to ageing and make Pakistan an attractive business and investment hall for the Pakistani diaspora abroad.

To understand these objectives the subsequent specific pointers are made:

Overseas Migration:

• The legal framework for migration governance is still guided by the Immigration Ordinance disseminated in 1979 and amended periodically. A draft policy document on “National Emigration and welfare Policy for Overseas Pakistanis”, has been prepared and widely shared with several stakeholders in the last few months. This document must be presented to, and approved, by parliament that allows you to offer an updated legislative framework for migration governance.
• More than half of all labour migrants from Pakistan retain to fall within the category of unskilled/semi-skilled workers. Unskilled and semi-skilled employees are frequently employed inside the riskiest jobs most liable to abuse, and their proportion among labour migrants have to be reduced through upskilling of our human resources. Efforts at enhancing the skill ranges of Pakistan’s labour force and its foreign places migrants ought to be strengthened. There is a need to put in the vicinity a systematic mechanism for comparing the effectiveness of the current applications underway for vocational and technical training. Thus, programs aimed at upskilling must be frequently evaluated, and their deficiencies removed.
•  Knowledge about return migration to Pakistan remains especially weak. No data collection system is in place to capture return flows in order to provide assistance where needed, reintegrate migrants productively in the community. Programs designed to achieve the above goals could be launched with focused interventions. The proposed “National Emigration and welfare Policy for Overseas Pakistanis” identifies the strengths of returnees as one of the three pillars for reaping the benefits of migration and should be implemented effectively once adopted.
• Irregular migration from Pakistan seems to have increased in the last few years. Progress has been made in terms of identifying, documenting, and curbing a number of this irregular migration. Additional efforts in this regard must identify the routes and intermediaries that enable such migration to exist and continue. Given the current economic slowdown in Pakistan, it is likely that this type of migration will exacerbate in the years to come. Since abnormal migration is especially risky and involves the most vulnerable persons, curbing at the source deserves focused attention and the allocation of vital resources.
• New tasks of cooperation consisting of the sharing of their labour demand database by using the UAE with Pakistan appears to be a promising step for appropriate placements of Pakistani people and for devising education packages to equip our employees with the needed skills. Further tasks just like the above have to be encouraged. At the identical time, joint research efforts to apprehend the challenges and possibilities for employment in host countries have to be explored through forums along with the Abu Dhabi Dialogue.

Remittances:

While the number of remittances is still growing in Pakistan although, at a decrease rate, it is important to notice that, the country’s percentage inside South Asia and the low-and middle-profits international locations has been decreasing. We used two unique estimation techniques in this record to quantify the expected quantity of remittances to Pakistan in 2020 and 2021. Based on a trend analysis of the beyond ten years, our projected figures recommend a mean 5% boom in 2020 and 10% boom in 2021 from the number of remittances obtained in 2019. Comparatively, by reading the fashion in Pakistan’s percentage of remittances inside South Asia and the low-and middle-income nations, the projections come to be much lower with a median of 1% increase in 2020 and simplest 3% in 2021.

Among the host of things answerable for the country’s lowering proportion of remittances in the region and a few of the low-and middle-earnings international locations is the fall inside the deployment of Pakistani migrant people abroad. The authorities desire to play its function in bridging the informational hole between the emerging possibilities of employment in international locations which includes Malaysia, Canada and Japan, and the ability employment-seekers by putting in place a delegated division/unit with one window information, documentation and alertness processing facility.

Source: State Bank of Pakistan, 2015 & 2019, Annual Outflow of Pakistani labor migrants, 2008-2019

Source: BEOE database, various years

Reference: Pakistan Migration Report 2020