Home ›› 03 May 2020 ›› World Biz
Expatriates have sent 108 crore 10 lakh dollar to Bangladesh in April this year through banking channel which is the lowest amount of money remitted by them in 2 and a half years as coronavirus has played havoc with the global economies.
In September, 2017 expatriates remitted 85 crore 68 lakh dollar, according to a Bangladesh Bank report released today.
The amount of money sent to the country in April, 2019 was 143 crore 40 lakh dollar compared to April this year, registering a fall in the remittance inflow by 24 percent. 128 crore 60 lakh dollar remittance was recorded in the previous month which came down by 15.62 per cent in April.
Meanwhile, while this is true that inflow of remittance dropped a significant amount in February, March and April, it is still better by 11.80 percent compared to inflow of remittance recorded ten months ago. In those ten months of 2019-20 fiscal year (July to April) expats sent in remittance amounting to 1,478 crore dollar which was 1,330 crore dollar in the same period for 2018-19 FY.
Experts say thousands of expats lost their jobs or returned home during the pandemic. Many are even paid half the salary they used to receive.
Expressing apprehension Executive Director of Policy Research Institute Ahsan H Mansur said, despite drought in inflow of remittance, the flow is still on adding that but I am afraid how long will the narrow flow continue.
Over 1 crore workers have migrated to different countries of the world and they remit a big amount of currency which amounts to 12 percent of the GDP.
According to the World Bank (WB) report, released on April 24, Bangladesh's inward remittance flow might fall by 22% in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The inflow of remittance in 2018-19 was recorded at 1,642 crore dollar which was 9.6 percent more than that of the previous year.
/wi/teb/nm
