Islamabad, Jan 28 (PTI) Over 762,000 Pakistanis left the country last year, becoming part of the pool that is helping the cash-strapped nation to economically stay afloat, amid a steep decline in foreign
direct investment and exports, a media report said on Wednesday.
The Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment registered 762,499 workers who left Pakistan in 2025, according to the monthly outlook report by the Ministry of Finance, showing an increase of over 5 per cent or nearly 37,000 more people who left the motherland in search of better job opportunities, The Express Tribune newspaper reported.
Citing the Finance Ministry, the newspaper said that in December 2025 alone the bureau registered 76,207 workers who left Pakistan, marking an 18.7 per cent surge on an annual basis.
Out of the total, 530,000 people went to Saudi Arabia in search of a good future. From unskilled to highly qualified and highly-skilled people are leaving Pakistan amid prolonged periods of low economic growth and heightened periods of political instability.
The money sent by overseas Pakistanis is now the single largest source of non-debt-creating foreign inflows that are keeping the country afloat. During the first half of this fiscal year, Pakistani workers sent USD 19.7 billion in remittances, up by 11 per cent, the paper said.
The government is getting around USD 40 billion annually from these workers without providing any support to them. Compared to this, the entire state machinery is focused on enhancing exports and foreign direct investment, but is failing, it said.
The foreign remittances were 23 times more than the USD 808 million foreign direct investment that Pakistan received during the first half of this fiscal year. It was USD 4.2 billion higher than the USD 15.5 billion worth of exports during this period.
Despite making efforts on multiple fronts, the FDI decreased nearly 44 per cent during the first half of this fiscal year. The Finance Ministry said that the foreign direct investment dipped from USD 1.4 billion to merely USD 808 million during the July-December period of this fiscal year.
Pakistan's inconsistent economic policies, high taxes and energy prices and unrealistically higher interest rates are keeping the foreign investors away. The authorities are still struggling to resolve inter-provincial issues that are also hampering foreign investment, according to the paper. PTI SH ZH
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