The July figure of remittance at $1.0 billion appears quite shocking this year when such monthly figure often stayed above $ 1.25 billion in recent years. Bangladesh continues to be among the top 10 remittance recipient countries for sometime, but its recent abysmal slide losing one notch in position is quite dismaying. Bangladesh has over 8 million expatriate workers abroad and the setback in the volume of their earnings as they sent money regularly home puts an ominous sign.
It is true that our workforce is less skilled at many places and are facing hazardous working environment including low pay. But looking at the plummeting remittance figure there seems to be something unusual at work. We know that most Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait are facing recession from a sharp fall in oil revenue and impact of regional war when they have scaled back much of their development work. So earnings of Bangladeshi workers have also sharply declined.
Moreover, we don’t have also a clear homeward migration figure as many workers returned home this year and recent years because of low earning that hardly cover livelihood cost in host countries. So we need a holistic calculation to ascertain the real situation influencing movement of our migrants and their remittances.
We must say that the figure presented by Migratory Movement Research Unit of Dhaka University has surely used credible inputs to assess the situation. Moreover, the declining remittance is capturing national headlines in recent months. But as it appears the real situation is horrific and our banks, which collect remittance and the government, must take objective stock of the situation to stop the leakage. Continued fall in remittance is poised to hit the rural economy and the overall well-being of the nation.
