‘With rupee down, Kerala remittances could touch $12.5 billion’

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala’s economy, propped up by diaspora remittances from about two million Malayalees abroad, can expect windfall remittances to touch Rs75,000 crore (Dh49 billion) this financial year which could form an all-time high of nearly 35 per cent of its net state domestic product, migration expert S. Irudayarajan says.

Irudayarajan, head of the Migration Unit of the Centre for Development Studies in the state capital, said if the rupee continues to hover at its present rates against the dollar for another two months, the magic figure of Rs75,000 crore in remittances would be achieved, when preliminary findings of the forthcoming edition of the Kerala Migration Survey (KMS) are out, in April 2014.

The Kerala economy, in the past three decades, has received generous remittances from people from the state who work overseas.

“We did the first KMS in 1998, and it was planned to be done every five years. But we undertook two additional surveys in 2007 on account of the global crisis and another one in 2011. The present survey is all set to start, latest by next month, and the preliminary findings are expected by April 2014,” Irudayarajan said in an interview.