Business Desk :
The inflow of remittance is decreasing and it may come down further in the coming days, although the country witnessed an unprecedented boom amid the Covid-19 pandemic, experts said.
Remittance dropped 28 per cent to $1.87 billion this July from a year ago, according to a recent report of the Bangladesh Bank, which notes that inflow also decreased by more than 3 percent in the same month compared to the previous one despite the Eid-al-Adha festival.
Dr Mustafizur Rahman, Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), said Bangladesh may witness a negative growth in this sector in the near future.
As he elaborated his comments, “I think it will be quite difficult to get more than $24 billion in remittance in the current fiscal year similar to the last FY, as many migrants remitted their savings at that time.”
“Bangladesh should not expect the remittance growth attained amid the pandemic to increase further. The factors that contributed to the growth are having less of an impact now,” he added.
Dr Mustafizur Rahman thinks that the inflow will gradually return to the pre-pandemic trend.
In FY 2020-21, the July inflow of $2.6 billion was an increase of 62.5 percent compared to the remittance sent a year ago. The country’s remittance earnings reached an all-time high of $24.78 billion in the last fiscal year despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking on the issue, Tasneem Siddiqui, founding chair of Refugee and Migratory Movement Research Unit (RMMRU), said, “When Bangladesh was witnessing a boost in remittance, we had stated that it was not a normal trend and it would gradually come down to the pre-pandemic trend.
“Around 5 lakh migrants returned home amid the pandemic, and the overseas employment rate was significantly lower last year. So, we may be witnessing the effects of such issues now. We have to wait, however, a few months to understand the dynamics of remittance in the coming days.”
Last December, RMMRU projected that as the year-on-year migration rate had already declined by around 71 percent due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the increasing remittance stream might tumble in 2021.
More than 7 lakh newly recruited Bangladeshis went abroad in 2019, but only 2.17 lakh workers migrated abroad last year, as revealed by data from the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET).
So far, till May this year, 1.95 lakh Bangladeshis have left home for employment abroad.
Reflecting on the matter, Syed Mahbubur Rahman, Managing Director and CEO of Mutual Trust Bank, said, “Normally, the remittance flow slows down just after Eid. And Eid-Al-Adha celebrations took place in July this year.
“Besides, the economies of the destination countries are in a state of recovery, which will have a positive impact on the overseas labour market,” he added.
