Pakistan received $ 20 billion in remittances in 2017 against $ 19.8 billion in 2016, according to the World Bank (WB) in its latest report

] According to the World Bank's latest report, "Migration and remittances", Pakistan received $ 20 billion in transfers in 2017, India $ 69 billion, China $ 64 billion, and Bangladesh $ 13 billion.

In Pakistan, after slow growth in 2016 (2.4 percent), money transfers remained virtually stable in 2017, largely as a result of significant declines in Saudi Arabian inflows (the largest source of funds) towards the end of the year, according to the report.

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This could be due to the nationalization policy on the labor market in Saudi Arabia . This trend continued until the beginning of 2018, but accelerated transfers from the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Models of Pakistani workers to Saudi Arabia in the first six months of 2017 were only 17 percent of the total workers who went to the kingdom in 2016 (77,600 in January-June 2017 versus 462,598 in 2016). The Kingdom recently imposed restrictions on the recruitment of 12 categories of foreign workers.

In South Asia, Pakistan is an important transit country for Afghans. Both Afghan and Pakistani transit migrants tend to stop in Turkey on their way to Europe, maintained the WB report.