Daily Times

KARACHI: OICCI members have appreciated the significant improvement in the FX remittance processing time and the growing engagement of the State Bank of Pakistan leadership with the key stakeholders.

The Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OICCI) released the results of their latest annual Remittance Survey 2021, conducted amongst foreign investors who are members of OICCI. This annual survey was conducted during
May 2021 to measure the progress made during the past year in terms of facilitating foreign remittances.

A significant 94 percent of the survey respondents informed that the Central Bank is now approving dividend remittances of the applications, vs. 72% in the last survey conducted in 2019, whereas 90 percent of respondents indicated that Technical fee is also being remitted within three months vs. 47% in the last survey. Likewise, 67 percent informed about similar timelines for Royalty remittance as opposed to a meager 28 % in the last survey.”

Commenting on the key findings of the survey, Irfan Siddiqui, OICCI President, highlighted that foreign investors have also highly appreciated the numerous Ease of Doing Business initiatives by SBP during the past year, considering the significant negative impact of Covid 19 on the business environment, especially for medium and small businesses, who were also the customers of many of OICCI members. SBP’s modernization initiative, inter-alia, enabled over 2/3rd of the respondents to track their remittance application online.

The foreign investors have also recommended few areas for further improvement by SBP, including giving more autonomy to authorized dealers to make routine remittances, allowing hedging of major FX payments like dividends, royalty, and technical fees, and further simplifying the foreign policy Exchange manual by making it sector-wise.

OICCI is a research-based organization that conducts numerous surveys on matters affecting foreign investors in Pakistan and shares key findings with relevant Government authorities to facilitate existing and potential foreign investors. The over 200 members of OICCI belong to 35 countries and collectively contribute about one-third of the country’s tax revenue and are the largest group of investors in Pakistan annually for the past many years. In the last nine years, OICCI members have invested over US$ 18 billion in expanding their footprint in Pakistan.

This survey was initiated in 2018 following concerns raised by foreign investors about the delays in the remittances to different foreign parties, their HQ, and suppliers.