The meaning of the word-‘repatriate’ means -to send back to home. Repatriation , basically refers to the process of returning a person back to one’s own country or it may also be considered as the process of converting a foreign currency to currency of the home land.
In finance, repatriable, is related most of the times with NRIs (Non Resident Indian). It is obvious that these people, living outside India must have their accounts and must be making investments too.. So, in this context, there are repatriable and non-repatriable accounts and investments as well.
Repatriable Accounts
These may be referred to as the ones , whose money in foreign currency can be transferred back to the home currency. Examples are below
- FCNR-B accounts-(Foreign Currency Non-Resident Bank Deposits)
- Features
- Deposit in this account can be opened in JPY,EURO,AUD, CAD etc
- Deposit can be individually or jointly but a joint account with a resident is not allowed
- Interest earned on these accounts is exempted from Indian Income Tax
- NRE accounts-(Non Resident External Account)
- Features
- The balances in these accounts are free from wealth tax.
- Accounts can be made in single name or in joint.
- Exempted from Indian Income Tax.
Non Repatriable accounts
These accounts appear to be more rigid to me. The currency in these accounts can not be converted to any other one. Examples are below
- NRO Accounts-(Non Resident Ordinary Rupee account)
- Features
- Accounts are denominated in Indian Rupee.
- Residents except those of Nepal and Bhutan , can not open these accounts.
- Account can be opened jointly with the residents.
These two accounts in reference to their origin are generally used for NRIs and thus help in easy transactions and thus helpful in their own respect.
