Govt measures behind surge in remittance: Kamal
Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal yesterday gave credits to the government's 2 % cash incentive for the recent surge in remittance.
Migrant personnel sent home $1.96 billion in August, up 36 % year-on-year. They remitted $2.6 billion in July, an archive for an individual month.
"In the last two months, we received plenty of remittance that is worth half a year," the minister told reporters.
Kamal said he ran a report on the remittance flow when he was the planning minister, from 2014 to 2018.
"We discovered that 51 % remittance enters the united states through legal channels, while the rest 49 per cent via informal channels."
This prompted the federal government to introduce a 2 % incentive on remittance in the last fiscal year.
The government in addition has removed complexities beneficiaries had faced while acquiring the money.
"A lot of questions were asked during the past. Now, no question is asked. The flow of remittance is increasing as a result of proactive measures from the government," Kamal said.
Like remittance, exports would can also increase in August, Kamal said.
"This upsurge in remittance and exports would continue."
Exports fetched $3.9 billion in July, up 44.4 % from the prior month and 0.6 % from a year earlier. The exports data for August has not been released yet.
According to experts and bankers, migrant workers sent more money in recent months as the pandemic has destroyed the livelihoods of their relatives back. The recent floods also prompted them to remit more.
The surge in remittance flow came despite gloomy forecasts from multilateral organisations due to the coronavirus pandemic.
For example, the Asian Development Bank said Bangladesh would be among the five worst developing Asian economies with regards to remittance inflows.
In the worst-case scenario, Bangladesh's remittance will decline by 27.8 % from its 2018 level.
In 2018, Bangladesh received $15.5 billion in remittance.
In April, the World Bank forecast that remittance flow to Bangladesh may plunge by as much as 22 per cent this year because of the ongoing pandemic.
Remittance hit an all-time most of $18.2 billion in the fiscal year 2019-20, up 10.87 per cent year-on-year.
There are about 1.3 crore Bangladeshis working abroad, whose transfer back home has turned into a pillar of strength for the economy.
The rising flow of remittance took the country's foreign currency reserves to an all-time most of $38.48 billion on August 26, Bangladesh Bank data showed.
Remittances account for 60 per cent of income in households with international migrants.
Forty-one % of households with at least one family member engaged as a migrant worker would be in poverty without remittance, said Stefano Paternostro, practice manager for social protection and jobs for South Asia at the World Bank, in September last year.
