Falling rupee brings cheer to Gulf workers It may be causing doom and gloom for most people, but the crashing rupee has brought cheer for some Indians. They include NRIs in the US and Europe, small in number but exceedingly wealthy. And blue-collar workers in West Asia, who are far more in number, and whose remittances now fetch many more rupees. Ramraj Yadav, who works as a cook in Dubai, sends AED (UAE dirham) 800 every month to his family in Ballia, Uttar Pradesh. The last few months have been great for him, with the value of the Emirati dirham shooting up from Rs 15 to Rs 18. “The 800 dirhams I sent home in February fetched my family Rs 11,500; this month they got Rs 14,400,” he says. The extra Rs 2,900 means a lot to his family. Encouraged, his brother has just joined him as a cook in Dubai and “together we will be able to send nearly Rs 25,000 home every month, which means a much better life for my parents”, he says. Manohar Shukla, a taxi driver in Oman, who remits Omani Rial 125-150 (Rs 21,000-25,000) every month, now hopes to put his daughter “in a much better — and English — school in my hometown, Motihari, in Bihar”. Ramlaal, a construction worker in Saudi Arabia, has been saving for long years for his daughter’s wedding. Now, the higher value of the Saudi Riyal (Rs 17.4) means he won’t have to borrow from his relatives to conduct a “decent marriage”. All the three blue collar workers remit cash via Xpress Money. Sudhesh Giriyan, the money-transfer company’s Vice-President and Business Head, says that last year, Indians remitted $69.13 billion. Of this, 31 per cent was from the Gulf region, 29 per cent from North America and 20 per cent from Europe. The bulk of the remittances from the Gulf are made by blue-collar workers, who send home, on an average, between $300 and $400 a month. The falling rupee has triggered a spike in the value and number of remittances. “Everybody is asking how and from where to take loans to send more money home,” says Giriyan. The Indian remittance market has two segments: account credit (75 per cent) and cash (25 per cent). About $17 billion comes through cash, and Xpress Money, with operations in 150 countries, has a 10 per cent share of that market. In an interesting shift, Giriyan says the number of workers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar remitting money has increased while the number for Kerala has come down. The cash transferred by the overseas worker – the commission is $3.7 a transaction — can be collected within minutes by a relative in India from the designated branch. “We have now launched the cash-to-card scheme through which money can be withdrawn from an ATM,” adds Giriyan. #rupeefall #gulfworkers #dollar #XpressMoney
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 13:37:23 +0000
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