Bangladesh sent nearly a record 1.0 million workers abroad
in the nine months of the current calendar year but inward remittance belies this
rise as it has been on a decline recently.
Data available from the Bureau of Manpower Employment and
Training (BMET) show that this is the highest number of outflows of workers in
nine months, so far. Bangladesh started sending workers abroad in 1976, as a source
of foreign-exchange earning. The official figure showed that 989,685 workers
went to different job-destination countries in January-September 2023. Earlier,
the number of outbound workers was 874,739 in the first nine months of 2022,
which was also a historical high in the overseas employment sector. Since 2022,
the number of outbound workers has set record after record, but inward-remittance
flows have receded, incidentally in the wake of forex crunch in the country as also
abroad. The central bank statistics showed that Bangladesh received US$1.34
billion in remittance in September-rated lowest in 41 months as the previous
lowest volume recorded was $1.09 billion in April 2020.
September remittances dropped by about 16 per cent from
August tally of $1.60 billion and it declined by 13 per cent year on year as
the volume of inner remittance was $1.54 billion, the data showed. Experts see
various reasons responsible for the ebbing trend in remittance income. In
particular, remittance flows through legal channels are showing less as workers
choose hundi as a convenient and profitable way to send money. Therefore, even
though a good volume of remittances is coming in the country, a significant
part of them does not come through legal channels, so it does not help to
increase the foreign- currency reserves. Moreover, money laundering is also a
big reason that insiders think has increased now rather than decreased.
