Pakistan exported some 184,000 manpower abroad for jobs last year, showing an increase of over 20 percent over 142,000 of year 2005, a cabinet minister said on Wednesday.

Pakistan's Minister for Labour, Manpower and Overseas Pakistanis Ghulam Sarwar Khan told a news conference that a significant rise has been observed in the number of Pakistanis proceeded abroad for employment in 2006.

Accordingly, a total of 100,207 people were sent to UAE (United Arab Emirates), 45,594 to Saudi Arabia, 12,614 Oman, 10,545 Kuwait, 4,757 Malaysia, 2,247 Qatar, 1,741 the United Kingdom, 1,630 Bahrain, 1,082 South Korea, 202 the United States and 2,572 to other countries.

The labor minister said that high level bilateral contacts have been established with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and South Korea for importing manpower from Pakistan.

To a question regarding remittances, he said Overseas Pakistanis have sent some 2.568 billion U.S. dollars to Pakistan from July to December of 2006 and hoped that the figure will cross to 5.2 billion dollars this fiscal year (July 2006 to June 2007).

Source: Xinhua