Bangladesh received $13.5 billion as remittances in 2017, the World Bank said on Monday.
Globally, Bangladesh is the ninth highest recipient of remittances and in South Asia it ranks third after India, $69bn, and Pakistan, $19.7bn.
In its latest Migration and Development Brief, the World Bank said Bangladesh, after a steep decline in 2016 (-11 .5%), remittances were flat in 2017.
“They now show a promising uptick, driven by strong inflows from the main source countries—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Kuwait, and Malaysia,” it said. Sri Lanka, in contrast, saw a slowdown of -0 .9% in 2017.
Nepal received $6.9 billion in remittances, which is a whopping 28.9% of its GDP, the report said. In 2017, remittances were 5.4% of the GDP of Bangladesh.
According to the Migration and Development Brief, Bangladesh may have avoided the impact of the Saudi labour market’s nationalization in 2017 due to an earlier agreement to send 400,000 workers, half of them female.
But the pace of migrant worker deployments from Bangladesh slowed in February 2018, due to lower outflows to Saudi Arabia. Only about 59,382 workers went abroad that month, against 85,038 in the corresponding month in 2017, it said.
As part of its effort to promote skilled migration, Bangladesh will send caregivers to 12 countries. The state-run Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training signed a memorandum of understanding with the Universal Medical and Technical Training Institute to train caregivers in needed skills, the report said.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
