The country’s remittance inflow witnessed a sharp fall in the first month of current year compared to the previous month due to global recession amid falling oil price.
The remittance dropped by 12.23% to $1.15 billion in January from $1.31 billion in December last year, according to the Bangladesh Bank data released yesterday.
Earlier, in October last year, remittance experienced a 19.42% drop, and later it recovered slowly in last two months of the year. But at the beginning of the new year of 2016, the remittance fell back to downturn, eroding the recovery.
The economy of middle-eastern countries is badly affected by sinking oil price which accounted for slower remittance growth, said a senior executive of a private bank.
The downward trend in global oil price also slowed the US economy, hitting emerging countries, he said.
The slower growth in remittance inflow is the consequence of these things, he said.
The global oil price came to the lowest level of $27 a barrel in January this year, a 77% drop from the peak in June 2014.
The remittance inflow in Bangladesh experienced a slight growth by 2.47% to $15.31 billion in the just-concluded year of 2015 compared to $14.94 billion in 2014.
The country witnessed 2.47% remittance growth last year compared to 8% in the previous year, according to the Bangladesh Bank data released yesterday.
The remitter sent $1.30 billion in the last month of 2015 which was 2.56% higher compared to $1.27 billion in the same month of previous year.
Bangladesh Bank projected 10% growth in the fiscal year 2016 in its monetary policy for July-December 2015.
But the remittance inflow showed negative growth in the first half of the fiscal year 2016.
The remittance posted slightly negative growth of 0.06% during July-December of fiscal year 2015-16, reaching $7.482 billion compared to $7.487 billion in the same period of the previous fiscal year.
