Home ›› 04 Oct 2021 ›› Front
The remittance inflow dropped for the fourth consecutive month (June to September) as more people opted for the illegal cross-border transaction system ‘hundi’.
Bangladesh Bank data showed the inflow falling by 19.74 per cent year-on-year in September to $1.72 billion. In July-September of this fiscal, expatriates sent home $5.40 billion, a fall of 19.44 per cent compared to the same period of the last FY, according to BB data.
Experts blamed the increasing trend of the hundi system for the decline.
Former lead economist of World Bank’s Dhaka office Zahid Hussain said the remittance inflow had increased amid the pandemic due to the collapse of the informal channels like the hundi system, thanks to the travel ban.
He said that the country received a record remittance last year, but now the informal channels are recovering as most of the countries have withdrawn travel ban.
“We projected earlier that remittance inflow will fall,” said former Trust Bank managing director Faruq Mainuddin Ahmed.
He said Bangladeshi expatriates sent more money to their relatives amid the pandemic considering the crisis period.
Many migrants returned home permanently amid the pandemic, which is one of the reasons behind the slump in remittance inflow, said Ahmed. “The inflow would not increase in the upcoming months.”
Last month, private commercial banks received $1,320.02 million, state-run banks $361.43 million, foreign banks $7.60 million and specialised banks $37.24 million in remittance, BB data showed.
Bangladesh received the highest remittance from Saudi Arabia, followed by the USA and UAE.
Amid lockdown and movement restrictions, the number of outgoing workers was 96,912 during April-June of this year, according to the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training, Bangladesh (BMET).
A World Bank report in May this year found that inward remittance flows to South Asia increased by about 5 per cent last year when India received $83.1 billion, Pakistan $26.1 billion and Bangladesh $21.1 billion.
