Country’s remittance trend rising despite COVID-19: Imran

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SANGSAD BHABAN, Sept 9, 2020 (BSS) – Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Imran Ahmad today said country’s remittance flow is witnessing upward despite COVID-19 pandemic, which has created a volatile situation in the global labour market over the last couple of months.

“Over 111,000 expatriate workers have returned home since April this year due to the pandemic, but the remittance of the country was 4.56 US$ billion in the last three months from June to August, which was 1.5% more compared to the last year during the period,” he said in a statement in the parliament under section 300.

“The global labour market is threatened by the corona pandemic, but our remittance flow was in growing trend mainly for 2 per cent incentives announced by the prime minister”, he said.

Around 18.2 US$ billion foreign remittance came in 2019-20 fiscal year, which was 11 percent more than previous year’s 16.4US$ remittance came in 2018-19 fiscals.

Imran in his statement cleared that it is necessary to deliver a speech in the parliament on growing confusion arise on the foreign labour market under the pandemic as the latest global situation has been emerged as a challenge for Bangladesh.

Before the pandemic, about 60,000 Bangladeshi workers migrated to abroad in every month, but the volume was almost zero in the last five months since April.

Till August, 2019, the minister said around 460,000 workers departed from here, but it was only 176,000 till August, 2020.

Around 7.5 million Bangladeshi are working abroad where only 1.11 lakh migrant workers so far have returned home.

He said the government feared that the number of returned migrants workers likely to be more under the situation, but luckily it didn’t happen.

About the government initiative, Ahmad said the government so far has donated Taka 13 crore as assistance for extending financial aid to the jobless migrant workers.

The government has taken a project of Taka 400 crore with an assistance by the World Bank for the welfare of the jobless migrant workers.

Taka 500 crore has also been allocated by the Prime Minister for effectively rehabilitation of the migrant workers, the minister told the house.