Growth of remittance market in India

As per recent statistics India tops global remittance surpassing China and Philippines with $62.7 billion in 2016. Millions of Indians residing in different corners of the world send remittances to their families and friends. More than 90% of remittance is happening in developing countries. In many developing and remote countries remittances is the main source of family and national income and also the largest source of some small island countries like Tuvalu and Tonga.

Remittances is one of the source for economic development for financial sector and provide strong impact on bank deposits to the private sector. At individual level people depend on remittances for their daily living expenses and unforeseen circumstances. For example in south East Asian countries like India, Bangladesh remittance was much higher than the income of the country from IT services and country’s garment exports respectively.

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India, while retaining its top spot as the world's largest remittance recipient, led the decline with remittance inflows amounting to $62.7 billion last year, a decrease of 8.9 per cent over $68.9 billion in 2015. In the latest edition of the Migration and Development Brief, the Bank estimates that officially recorded remittances to developing countries amounted to $429 billion in 2016, a decline of 2.4 per cent over $440 billion in 2015. Source.

In India the major destination markets for inward remittance is English-speaking industrial countries like USA, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Apart from these countries unskilled migrants are more in gulf countries like UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. The profile of migrants differs from country to country as per recent study migrants to the Gulf and Asia are largely unskilled with small percentage of IT professionals.

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India is standing top in the list from 2012 for inward remittance following by china and Philippines. In India the Remittance market is mainly served by India Post, commercial banks, foreign exchange bureaus and private subgroups. Public and private banks have the largest share of remittance inflows sharing more than 80% including Internet-based remittances. Money Transfer Operators such as Western Union, MoneyGram, and XOOM are major private players operating in India. India Post provides different remittance-related services with partnering with Western Union in all corners of India. With the increasing of Internet usage and online banking remittance services is growing fast across the country.