LAHORE – State Bank of Pakistan launched the historic Pakistan Remittance Initiative (PRI), in August 2009 to boost and facilitate the flow of remittance sent home by expatriate Pakistanis. As a result of exemplary initiatives taken by SBP, in this connection, the volume of home remittance attained tremendous growth during last couple of years. An amount of $6,118 million has been received from July 2010 to January 2011 showing a rise of $920 million (17.70 percent) over the corresponding figure during the same period last year.
The Bank of Punjab is providing home remittance facility since May 2007; however after receipt of instructions regarding PRI from the State Bank of Pakistan, the bank took a number of initiatives, including availability of the service, at all 273 branches of the bank, present in 130 major cities; provision of equipments and dedicated human resource at all branches, especially those having sizeable volume of the home remittance transactions; modernisation and upgradation of the hardware to ensure utmost IT support, arrangements with top international banks, exchange houses and fund transfer companies across the world; availability of the service to get account credited directly from abroad, so that the funds may be withdrawn through ATM or Cheque, as per convenience of the recipient; training of the concerned staff at branches, etc.
The Bank of Punjab is rated among top six banks in Pakistan, in the perspective of remittance business and it is striving hard to attain top position, in near future.
