Bangladeshis living abroad sent home $5,984 million in the just-ended fiscal year, which was 25 per cent more than the amount remitted a year before. The impressive growth of homebound remittance put the foreign exchange reserves to $5,098 million, well above the safe threshold equivalent of three months’ import bills. The provisional June remittance amounted to $517 million, $44 million less than the May figures.

In November 2006, the country received its highest ever amount of monthly remittance worth $598.73 million due to Eid festival and also for general elections, which were later cancelled. The remittance growth came on the back of a sharp jump in manpower export, stable exchange rate and quick deliveries of money to home through a network of over 660 foreign exchange houses.

In the first nine months of the 2006-07 fiscal that ended on June 30, a total of 354,710 people left homes for jobs abroad through legal channel. A total of 286,000 people entered the global job market in the whole 2005-06 fiscal year, according to statistics. About 4.5 million Bangladeshis are currently working in different countries of the world.
The exchange rate of dollar was quite stable at Tk 67-69 level throughout the year, which also encouraged the expatriates to send more money through formal channel.

The central bank gave permission to over 660 exchange houses to have transactions with local banks to accelerate money transfers through official channels and curb hundi business. This exchange houses played a key role in increasing the remittance inflow. Local banks now take maximum 72 hours to reach the money to recipients anywhere in the country. The remittance coming from Saudi Arabia, USA, UK, UAE and Kuwait totalled $4,603 million up from July 2006 up to May 2007.

It is expected that remittance from Saudi Arabia would cross $1.7 billion which was $1.69 billion in 2005-06. Another new dimension of remittance is that over $1.7 billion was remitted from the US and UK in the current fiscal, which was $1.32 billion in the last fiscal.