How a remittance from Dubai moves through India

Step 1 of 6Money from abroad

A nurse in Dubai sends money home to her parents in Kerala. Millions of such transfers, from all over the world, add up to one of the largest flows into Indian households. In 2023-24 households received ₹9.83 lakh crore Official total · split estimated in remittances and other private transfers from abroad, which is 3.4% of GDP Official total · split estimated.

That total is a published figure. Splitting it across different kinds of household is an estimate, as later steps show.

The flow is not new. The annual series starts in 2006-07, when transfers were ₹1.39 lakh crore Official total (3.3% of GDP Official total). They have grown many times over in rupees, while their share of GDP has stayed in a similar range: in 2023-24 it was 3.4% of GDP Official total. The preliminary figure for 2025-26 is ₹13.73 lakh crore Official total and may be revised. (Shares before 2022-23 are measured against GDP on the older 2011-12 base, so compare them loosely.)

Step 2 of 6The part from the UAE

How much of this comes from the Gulf? The Reserve Bank of India's survey of remittances reports which countries the money is sent from. Applying its share for the United Arab Emirates, 19.2% Estimated, to the total gives about ₹1.89 lakh crore Estimated from the UAE. Only the United States sends more (27.8% Estimated).

Three cautions, because this is an estimate and not a measurement:

• The survey reports the UAE as a whole. Dubai cannot be separated from Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and the other emirates, so this story follows money from the UAE.
• The survey covers money sent through banks. The national total also includes other transfers, such as withdrawals from deposits that non-resident Indians hold in India. Applying the bank-channel share to everything assumes the other channels have the same country mix.
• The survey's country shares, as published, add up to slightly less than the whole, so they are scaled up to sum to one before they are applied.

The survey's figures may be used here only for internal processing until the Reserve Bank grants permission to republish them, so its source link is withheld and the figure is on this project's list of pending permissions.

Step 3 of 6Which households receive it

Which households receive the money? No survey measures this directly by income group, so the split is estimated: each State's share of remittances (from the same survey) is spread across that State's households in line with their spending.

On these estimates, a little more of the money goes to towns and cities than to villages, and much more goes to households that already spend the most than to the poorest.

Step 4 of 6What households do with their income

What happens to the money once it arrives? The accounts cannot follow one family's rupees, but they do show how Indian households, taken together, use their income. Of every hundred rupees that households paid out in 2023-24 (₹245.74 lakh crore Set by balancing in all):

Two notes on reading this list.

• These are averages, not what one extra rupee does. A family that receives a remittance may save more of it, or spend more of it, than the average household. How spending responds to an extra rupee is a question for the model's next phase.
• One line is a gap, not a choice. The published household accounts do not fully add up: income is larger than spending plus saving. That unallocated residual is shown as its own line, never added to consumption or saving. Household saving by group is itself worked out as what is left over, so it is an estimate too.

Step 5 of 6What the spending buys

Most of the money is spent. Households spent ₹164.16 lakh crore Official total · split estimated on goods and services. Where does a rupee of that spending go? Of every hundred rupees:

• Taxes. GST, and other taxes such as excise and State taxes on fuel and alcohol, are shares of household purchases estimated from the supply and use tables and scaled to the balanced tax totals. Customs duties and product subsidies are not in these two lines.
• Imports. This line assumes that households buy the same mix of imported and Indian-made goods as the economy as a whole, product by product. That is a simplification, so the figure is labelled estimated.
• Trade and transport. Shops, wholesalers and lorries earn a margin on most goods. That work happens in India, so this part of the spending stays at home.

Most of the rest pays Indian producers for what they made, and from there it becomes wages, farm and business income, and profits.

Step 6 of 6The first round only

This is the first round only. The shopkeeper who sells to a remittance family earns an income and spends part of it, and so on. Adding up those later rounds needs a model of how each kind of household and firm responds, which is what the next phase of this project, the Engine, will build.

What the accounts already show is the first round: money from abroad arriving in households, most of it spent, much of the spending flowing on to Indian producers, and a part leaking out again as taxes and imports.