FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26 - MARCH 3, 2016 • 8 Pages www. enritimes.com
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EMPLOYMENT & NRI TIMES
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Spurt in Gulf remittances to India
MUMBAI: The oil crisis and
subsequent job losses in
West Asia have not affected
NRI remittances. In fact
banks are witnessing an increase in remittances during
the past five months.
Federal Bank’s rupee-denominated personal remittances have gone up 32pc to
Rs 44,000 crore in the 10month period between April
and Jan this year against the
same period last year. In the
FY15, the growth rate was
slightly lower at 28pc. State
Bank of Travancore saw a
growth of 13pc in remittances to a little above Rs
37,000 crore from Rs 33,000
crore for the period under
review. Last fiscal, the bank
had seen a growth of 11pc
in remittances. State Bank of
Travancore and Federal
Bank are the leading banks
in the remittances business
and West Asia accounts for
almost 90pc of NRI remittances.
The receipts have not
been affected in the past few
months when several anecdotal evidences have been
coming in about people losing jobs and shutting business ventures. During the
four-month period between
Oct and Jan, Federal Bank’s
remittances have gone up
by 36pc and in Jan alone the
growth was 62pc to Rs 4,870
BRICS meet in Mumbai
MUMBAI: Representatives
from Brazil, Russia, China
and South Africa will meet
in Mumbai to discuss urban
challenges such as security,
public transport and affordable housing. The four powerful emerging economies,
along with India, comprise
the BRICS group. The
“BRICS Friendship Cities
Conclave 2016” will be held
here from April 14 to 16.
Prime Minister Narendra
Modi would open the inaugural session which will be
also attended by Finance
Minister Arun Jaitley, External Affairs Minister Sushma
Swaraj, RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, British Treasury
Minister Jim O’Neill and
Chief Minister Devendra
Fadnavis. The BRICS conference will focus on cities. Every country will have representatives from two or more
cities and we will try to gain
insights from each other’s experiences on tackling urban
challenges,” said state chief
secretary Swadheen Kshatriya. O’Neill, an economist,
coined the BRICS concept in
2001. The economic bloc is
home to more than 43pc of
the world’s population and
accounts for over 20pc of
global GDP. In his invite to
Modi, Fadnavis said it was
important to establish co-operation between BRICS cities
and set up a forum to find solutions to common problems.
crore against Rs 3,001 crore
in the same month last year.
Remittances from the
UAE to India and Philippines in particular went up
by 20pc, says Sudhesh
Giriyan, COO of Xpress
Money. The Indian rupee’s
value against the US dollar
has been falling since December. As of last week, the
Indian currency depreciated to 68.68 against the
greenback. The rising value
of the dollar, to which the
UAE currency is pegged, is
a boon to remitting expatriates in the UAE. A stronger
dollar means UAE expatriates get to send home more
rupees, euros or pesos with
their monthly income. As of
last year, money transfers to
India and the Philippines
reached $72 billion and $30
billion, respectively, according to World Bank.
“We have been seeing
continuous surge in remittances in the last three
months. A weak rupee is
good news for remitters,
mostly white-collar expatriates who can take advantage
of a weaker rupee and send
more money home, generally larger sums that they
have been saving up here,”
said Giriyan. The Indian
currency is not the only one
seeing the downward trend.
(Contd. on page 2)
Saudi Consul-General Abdullah Suliman Al-Esa with Kuwait Consul-General Mansour Al
Olaini at the Kuwait National Day celebrations in Mumbai (Also see page-8).
NEW DELHI:The Union
Cabinet chaired by Prime
Minister Narendra Modi has
given its approval for signing
of an agreement between India and Maldives for the
avoidance of double taxation
of income from international
air transport. The agreement
provides for relief from
double taxation for airline
enterprises of India and
Maldives by way of exemption of income derived by the
enterprise of India from the
operation of aircraft in international traffic, from Maldivian tax and vice versa. Under the agreement, profits
from the operation of aircraft
in international traffic will be
taxed in one country alone.
DUBAI: Axis Bank has announced its plans to further
strengthen its remittance
offering in the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) region by providing new
channels of money transfer
to existing NRI customers.
“The Bank continues to
expand its partner network
across the GCC region with
specific focus on getting into
more arrangements with Correspondent Banks while continuing to actively manage our
large existing exchange house
relationships,” said Rajiv
Anand, group executive head
, retail banking at Axis Bank.
Anand said that this had resulted in a robust growth at a
CAGR of 26pc over the past
three years in remittance volumes from the UAE and that
the bank would continue to
look at growing aggressively
for FY 16-17 as well.
Axis Bank, which caters
to NRIs in the UAE through
its offices here and through
tie ups with other banks and
financial institutions in the
GCC, offers automated remittance processing engine,
AxisRemit Direct, available
to exchange houses and correspondent banks. GCC includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE , Qatar, Bahrain
and Oman. “Our strategy of
expanding our partner network of Exchange Houses
and Correspondent Banks
in the region is to provide
additional channels of
money transfer to our existing NRI customers as well
as to leverage these relationships to acquire new NRI
customers,” Anand said.
He said a dedicated operations unit, centralised remittance hub, has also been
setup to provide efficient operational support and customer service to our institutional remittance partners. In
addition, Online FX Booking
Portal, FX Connect, which
allows our Partners to carry
out real time FX trades with
the bank has also been offered. “As DIFC grows further
to become a formidable part
of the local economy, Axis
Bank will play more active
role. Through the Representative Offices in Abu Dhabi
and Dubai, we support service requirements of NRIs
who hold or want to hold a
banking account in India.
The representative offices
are governed by the UAE
Central Bank regulations,”
he said. Axis Bank has its
presence through branches
in Singapore, Hong Kong
DIFC - Dubai, Colombo and
Shanghai, Representative
Offices at Dubai and Abu
Dhabi, Dhaka and Axis
Bank UK, a wholly-owned
subsidiary of the bank.
ter for direct flights to the
Gulf hub during his visit to
Coimbatore, by asking him to
include the city in the Bilateral Services Agreements
(BASA). Nevertheless, the
minister was not in favour of
allowing foreign carriers to
expand their services in India, instead saying that he
would recommend either Air
India or Air India Express to
launch a connection.
“It is shocking to know
that Air India Express has increased (Contd. on page 2)
NEW DELHI: So far, e-tourist visas were available for
113 countries at 16 Indian
airports. The home ministry will extend e-tourist visa
scheme to 37 more countries from Friday, taking the
total number of beneficiary
countries to 150.
The government had
launched the e-tourist visa
facility on Nov 27, 2014.
An e-tourist visa lets you
travel to India without having a visa stamp on your
passport. It is given once
you actually land and thus
saving you the trouble of
sending your passport to the
embassy to get a visa beforehand. Here is how it works:
Upload the form and photo
online, pay the visa fee
online receive the eTV via
email, show it on arrival in
India.
Till now, the scheme was
made available to 113 countries at 16 Indian airports
designated for providing etourist visa service. The etourist visas of over 7.50
lakh have been issued under the scheme.
At present, on an average
3,500 e-tourist visas are being granted daily to foreign
nationals.
India-Maldives tax
accord okayed
Axis Bank strengthens Gulf NRI services
Bahrain has 36,000 Plea for direct Dubai
illegal expat workers flight from Coimbatore
MANAMA: There are 36,000 illegal expat employees in
Bahrain, a drop from around 60,000 six months ago, it
was claimed this week. Ali Al Kooheji, operations vicepresident of the Labour Market Regulatory Authority
(LMRA) said during a meeting: “Six months ago, the figure [for illegal expat workers] was around 60,000. Through
various measures including an amnesty, inspections and
awareness campaigns, we were able to bring it down to
almost 36,000.”
Al Kooheji added that 3,782 workers have been classed
as ‘runaway’, based on the number of formal complaints
made by employers. And a total of 17,000 people registered to work in Bahrain have reportedly left the kingdom. Al Kooheji was speaking at the third open consultative meeting of the trade and retail sector committee at
Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He said the
number of illegal expat workers had been reduced.
For news contact:
editorial@enritimes.com
Phone: 67241622 / 662
/employment & nritimes
EXCHANGE RATES
As on 25th February, 2016 (In rupees)
Currency
US Dollar
Pound Sterling
Swiss Franc
Euro
Saudi Riyal
Bahrain Dinar
Kuwait Dinar
Qatar Riyal
UAE Dirham
Omani Riyal
Buying
Selling
64.00
89.20
64.50
70.50
16.90
169.80
189.20
17.40
17.20
165.30
72.40
100.90
74.20
79.90
19.60
194.00
235.50
19.90
19.80
188.50
Rates are subject to change without notice. Errors & Omissions excepted.
Jer
arghese F
orex Bureau
Jerrr y V
Varghese
Forex
COIMBATORE: Fed up with
a lack of response from local bureaucrats and politicians over their request to
start a direct flight to Dubai,
residents of Coimbatore
have decided to take matters
into their own hands. Local
newspaper reported that
several organisations in the
Tami Nadu city, including
the local branch of the Indian Chamber of Commerce
and Industry (ICCIC), have
launched an online petition,
which is already receiving
significant interest.
“In just a day our petition
on www.change.org received
more than 1,000 votes from
residents and Coimbatore
citizens living elsewhere,” R.
Raveendran, from the Residents Awareness Association
of Coimbatore (RAAC),
claimed. The petition has
also been posted on other
websites and on social media, he added. In September
last year, both the ICCIC and
the RAAC had petitioned
India’s civil aviation minis-
Now e-visa to 150 countries
Illegal Indian migrants to suffer if Trump wins
India third largest
issuer of passports
WASHINGTON: Illegal Indian
immigrants in the US could be
among the worst affected if
Donald Trump implements
harsh anti-immigration measures as the next president.
A report from the Latin
American Social Sciences Institute, Mexico, has concluded
that one-third of all Asian illegal immigrants who were detected while attempting to enter the US between 2007 and
2015 were from India.
A total of 2,450 illegal Indian immigrants were apprehended by Mexican authorities
before they reached the
Mexico-US border near the
state of Texas, the study states.
But in many cases, the detained
illegal immigrants were let off
PUDUCHERRY: India now
ranks third in the world after
China and the US in issuing
passports with the number having doubled since 2010, a senior official of the external affairs ministry has said. The
number of passports issued
went up from around 60 lakh
five years ago to 1.2 crore last
year, Joint Secretary of Ministry Muktesh K Pardeshi said.
“In 2010 we embarked on a
journey for passport Seva
programme to set up new centres. Now there are 37 passport
offices and 90 Seva kendras. India has become a major passport
issuing country in the world and
is today ranked third in the
world after China and US in issuing passports,” Pradeshi said.
as Mexican laws are ill- growing also in Mexico, he
equipped to deal with the in- added.
The public at large in
flux.
Mexico learnt about
Prof
Rodolfo
Indians using their
Cassilas, the author
country as a transit
of the report, told a
route to the US in
TV channel that
2010 when a drug
Trump’s anti-immicartel on Mexicogration plans are
US border killed 72
radical and need
immigrants over an
greater international
evident payments
attention as they can
issue. “One out of
potentially trigger a
the 72 killed was
new kind of internafrom India and that
tional crisis. The Donald Trump
is when the internatrend of smuggling Asian nationals through Mexican border tional dimension connecting
has been well established for South Asia with Central Asia
the past few decades, said became clear to the masses, but
Cassilas. But Mexican society is the government has not so far
now better informed and de- openly discussed the Asian dimands for stricter laws are mension,” Casillas said.
“That illegal immigrants
from India and the rest of South
Asia in general reaching the US
shows co-ordination among
transnational human traffickers
located in Central America,
Asia and the US. They can also
move other things, drugs for
example,” Casillas said. Both
Mexico and the US are aware
of the utility that human traffickers have for serving other
criminal network.
“For that, undocumented
immigrants are so important for
both Mexico and the US,”
Casillas said, explaining that
the argument of greater security
might be used to take anti-immigrant measures in the US if
Trump’s plan to become the
President comes true.