As an external source of financing Indian migrants” remittances have been playing very important role in India's macro and micro economic development. It has been higher than the foreign direct investment as well as foreign portfolio investment. It is also more than three times than the official development aid. In 2013, remittances to India amounted to 70 billion US$, the highest in the world. Throughout the 1990s, they offset country's merchandise deficit to a large extent and also presently amounts to nearly 4 percent of the Indian Gross Domestic Product. The remittance figures would get larger if you also consider the large amounts of ‘hawala’ transactions that are illegal. The paper deals with the emerging trends with respect to remittance inflows and other major issues related thereto.
Diaspora, emigrants, foreign exchange, foreign portfolio investment, financial institutions, IT exports, micro-economic finance institutions, remittances
