KARACHI: Six months of the current fiscal ended on a good note as the overseas Pakistani sent 17 per cent higher remittances compared to the same period of last fiscal year.

The State Bank on Tuesday reported that the overseas Pakistanis sent $5.291 billion during July-Dec, 2010 showing an increase of $761 million or 17 per cent as compared to $4.53 billion received over the same period last year.

In December, 2010, an amount of $863 million was remitted home by overseas Pakistanis, up 23.72 per cent or $165 million, when compared with $697.6 million received in the same month last year.

The government has been relying heavily on remittances to mitigate the impact of massive trade imbalance, which has reached over $8 billion during the first six months of this fiscal.

These remittances helped the country to witness one of the lowest current account deficits in the first five months of this fiscal.

The State Bank reported that during July-Nov, 2010, the current account deficit was minus $504 million, which is about 30 per cent of what it was during the same period last year.

According to the State Bank, the monthly average of remittances for the July-Dec, 2010, period comes out to $881.9 million as compared to $755 million during the same period of last year.