Expats remit 1.06 billion dollars in 12 days

In just 12 days of the current month November, the country has received over 1.06 billion dollars (106 crore dollars) in remittance.

There has been no instance of such a high amount of remittance coming in such a short span of time within a single month. The finance ministry revealed this in a notice published on Monday.

According to the finance ministry, from July to 12 November of the current 2020-21 finance year, remittance amounted to 9.891 billion dollars (989 crore 10 lakh dollars).

In the corresponding period of 2019-20, the remittance totalled over 6.89 billion dollars (689 crore 70 lakh dollars).

That means, there has been a 43.42 per cent increase in remittance compared to last year.

The finance minister said that the impact of the government's timely 2 per cent cash incentive and other steps have led to this increase in remittance.

"The entire world faces a crisis due to the unexpected shock of COVID-19. At this juncture, our warrior foreign currency earners have been in the driver's seat, keeping the economy vibrant with their remittance," the notice quoted finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal as saying.

He said that a 2 per cent cash incentive had been declared in the 2019-20 budget for those sending back remittance to the country through authorised channels. Remittance has been spiralling up since then, he said.

Many had said this would not sustain long. When a huge volume of remittance began to flow in during the first three months of the fiscal, people said that the migrants were winding up their jobs and businesses to return home. Many international agencies had said the same, contending that the remittance inflow would not be sustainable.

Finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal went on to say that the continuous growth of remittance since the incentive was announced up until today, proved their predictions to be wrong. It was once again proved that the government was right. It is rare in the country's history for over 2 billion dollars (200 crore dollars) to come in every month.

Bangladesh Bank records from 1 to 12 November show that, as always, most of the remittance came through Islami Bank, totalling 347.4 million dollars (34 crore 74 lakh dollars). The next highest amount came through the state-owned Agrani Bank, that is 110.80 million dollars (11 crore 8 lakh dollars). And 110.10 million dollars (11 crore 1 lakh dollars) came through Dutch Bangla Bank.

No overseas remittance came through the state-owned BDBL and the specialised Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank and the foreign banks Al Falah, National Bank of Pakistan, Habib Bank and the State Bank of India.