By: Mahmoud Gamal
Dubai – Mubasher: The value of Indian expatriate workers’ money transfers from the UAE has declined in the third quarter of 2018 by around 14.6% to AED 14.8 billion ($4.03 billion) from AED 17.32 billion ($4.72 billion) in the previous quarter, recent data showed.
Indian expatriates’ transfers made up roughly 35.7% of the total volume of the transfers, which registered AED 41.4 billion ($11.27 billion) between July and September, data by the Central Bank of the UAE showed.
Expatriates from Pakistan came in second with AED 3.56 billion in Q3-18, representing 8.6% of total transfers followed by expats from the Philippines, who ranked third, with AED 2.80 billion, down 11.11% quarter-on-quarter from AED 3.15 billion and representing 6.7% of total money transfers.
Egyptian expats in the UAE came in fourth with AED 2 billion in Q3-18, representing 4.8% of the total, and registering a decline in transfers compared to AED 2.4 billion in Q2-18.
British expats ranked fifth with AED 1.7 billion, while US expats came in sixth place with AED 1.54 billion. Both registered declines in the value of money transferred in Q3-18 compared to the previous quarter.
Year-on-year, expats money transfers declined 4.6% to AED 41.4 billion from AED 43.3 billion, the data showed.
Of this figure, around 79.2% of transfers, amounting to AED 32.8 billion were carried out through money transfer companies, while the remaining 20.8%, amounting to AED 8.6 billion, were transferred via banks.
As for the first nine months of 2018, transfers grew 7% to AED 129.4 billion from AED 121 billion in the same period of 2017.
