NRI Deposits in Kerala Rise by 12 Per Cent in 2016-17

The inflow of Non-Resident Indian (NRI) deposit to Kerala went up by 12 per cent during 2016-17, according to the economic review that was presented in the Kerala state Assembly recently. NRI deposits were at Rs 152,348 crore as on March 2017, it said.

The total NRI deposit in public sector banks was Rs 83,855 crore, while in private sector banks it was Rs 68,493 crore as on March 2017. In March 2016, total NRI deposit was Rs 135,609 crore, according to the report.

The review said that 33.52 per cent of the total remittance was received by the State Bank of India group, while other nationalized banks got 21.06 per cent of the total remittance. The percentage share of NRI deposits in the private sector banks is 44.96 per cent while 55.04 per cent went to the public sector banks. Federal bank, which is based in Kerala, got more NRI deposits than the public and private sector banks.

According to data collected by the State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC) last year, NRI deposits in total in banks in Kerala on December 2014 were Rs 1.05 lakh crore, and this became Rs 1.48 lakh crore in December 2016, the New Indian Express reported.

“The state received more than Rs 8 lakh crore in the past 14 years as per the Centre For Development Studies (CDS),” said Pravasi Bandhu Welfare Trust chairman KV Shamsudheen earlier, the publication reported.

Shamsudheen added that if the NRIs kept 20 per cent of the remittances as deposits each year, along with its cumulative interest, there were chances that there would have been a minimum of Rs 4 lakh crore in the banks as deposits.

However, the deposit balance was only Rs 1.48 lakh crore. “This data shows a very negligible saving mentality in Non-resident Keralites. These figures show all the remittance the state received had been consumed by families’ non-productive areas like extravagant lifestyle and expenditure like marriages, luxury house-building, cars, expensive healthcare and buying non-productive land. Very little has been saved,” he said.

According to the United Arab Emirates’ Central Bank figures released in December last year, Indian expatriates sent the maximum amount of remittances back home from UAE in the third quarter of 2017. Foreign residents in total sent Dh43.3 billion to home countries, of which Indians sent Dh15.46 billion.

The World Bank report released on Oct.3, 2017 said that with the Indian diaspora estimated to bring in $65 billion in 2017, the country is set to secure its position as the one receiving top remittances. The report projects global remittances to grow by 3.9 per cent to $596 billion this year.