Official remittance figures capture at best half of Pakistan’s inflows

Evidence

In 2004, however, when the Pakistani government initiated schemes to promote the use of the state banks in an e√ort to curb smuggling and money laundering, remittances through o≈cial channels totaled almost 4 billion, and remittances through uno≈cial channels were estimated as high as 15 billion to 20 billion. In 2008 alone, remittances received from Pakistani transnational migrants easily reached more than 1 billion from the U.S., the U.K. and European Union, and United Arab Emirates each.∞≠ Economists estimate that the o≈cial figures represent, at best, half of the remittances that actually enter Pakistan. Much of the disparity results from workers’ use of uno≈cial money-changing systems and informal banking networks, called hundi in South Asia and hawala in the Middle East, that charge lower fees than banks. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 506

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines hundi and hawala informal banking networks as central to the remittance disparity.
• XREF: Ties to the reader’s interest in informal/extralegal economic systems, like the diamond trade’s private arbitration.
• SEED: Could seed an article on how international sanctions and banking controls push migrant economies further into informal hawala networks.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 506