The Head/Principal Offices of

All Authorized Dealers in Foreign Exchange

Dear Sirs / Madam,

Facilitation of Home Remittances

State Bank of Pakistan has an active agenda to continuously analyze global scenario related to remittances and take all necessary steps to remove barriers to the flow of remittances, and improve access to banking facilities to overseas Pakistanis and their families. In order to achieve these objectives, the State Bank, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis are jointly making efforts under Pakistan Remittance Initiative (PRI).

One of the major impediments to the flow of remittances through formal channels is insufficient marketing efforts at the originator end aimed at providing information about the remittance channels and other facilitation to overseas Pakistanis. In order to address this issue, it has been decided to encourage overseas entities, having specific Home Remittances related arrangements with banks in Pakistan, to make additional efforts to facilitate remittances flow through formal channels. Under the auspices of PRI, a performance based scheme has been developed to encourage overseas entities to enhance marketing efforts at origination end. Government of Pakistan (GOP) shall reimburse marketing expenses through SBP as tabulated below:

The above scheme shall be subject to the following conditions:-

1. The scheme will be applicable to those entities who offer free remittance services under scheme of reimbursement of TT charges as per our FE Circular Letter No. 40 dated November 29, 2000.
2. The above mentioned incentives will be given on country-wise performance of the overseas entities.
3. The overseas entities will be required to submit a detailed marketing plan to the respective banks with which they have Home Remittance related arrangements.
4. The scheme will be applicable to those overseas entities which have in Pakistan arrangements with banks only and if any overseas entity itself or any of its affiliated concern is found involved in effecting remittances through channels other than banking sector in Pakistan then such entity will not be entitled for reimbursement under the scheme.
5. For the entities already effecting remittances through banking channels, their target would be 25% more than what they channeled during the period from October 01, 2008 to September 30, 2009 to qualify for the above scheme (for the entities which started operations during the above-referred period, their respective targets will be calculated by spreading their existing performance to the whole 12 months).
6. Only those entities will be eligible for reimbursement under the scheme which has satisfactory compliance status as regard to AML/KYC policies to be ensured by the bank entering into agreements.
7. The scheme shall be for one year initially and overseas entities will be reimbursed at the end of the scheme year based on actual performance as assessed by SBP.
8. The starting date for evaluating the performance would be October 01, 2009 and their performance shall be evaluated on the amounts mobilized till September 30, 2010.
9. The performance of overseas entities in terms of home remittances affected shall be reported by banks to (PRI) SBP on monthly basis.
10. The scheme shall run concurrently with any other scheme previously announced by SBP and currently in force.

The Authorized Dealers are advised to bring the above scheme to the knowledge of all overseas entities having home remittances related arrangement with them.