Abstract

While inflow of remittances through informal channels are widely discussed in terms of their opportunity cost for the recipient country and likely instrument of illegal activities, the size of such inflows is indeterminate. Pakistan is on the forefront of global efforts to curb hawala transactions yet no consistent estimates are available. This study attempts to use an indirect macroeconomic approach to estimate hawala transactions from United State of America (USA), United Kingdom (UK), and Saudi Arabia (KSA) for the period 2010Q3 to 2019Q2. These three countries host around 50 percent of Pakistani emigrants and account for almost 55 percent of total remittances received in Q1FY20. Our estimates show that hawala transactions have significantly declined in Pakistan as percentage of official remittances from all three countries. This demonstrates that the enhanced monitoring, regulations and various policy measures by the Government of Pakistan have proved instrumental in reducing hawala transactions over time.

摘要

尽管就非正规渠道的汇款流入对接收国的机会成本和可能的非法活动手段进行了广泛讨论，但这种流入的规模是不确定的。巴基斯坦在遏制哈瓦拉交易的全球努力中处于最前沿，但尚无统一的估计数。本研究尝试使用间接宏观经济方法来估计美国（美国），英国（英国）和沙特阿拉伯（KSA）在2010年第三季度至2019年第二季度的哈瓦拉交易。这三个国家约占巴基斯坦移民的50％，占20财年第一季度收到的汇款总额的近55％。我们的估计表明，巴基斯坦从三个国家的官方汇款中所占的哈瓦拉交易量显着下降。