Overseas Bangladeshis have pumped a record $7.9 billion back into their home economy in the past financial year, thanks to an increase in expatriate workers, officials said on Monday.
The amount, to the year ended June 30, 2008, grew by $2 billion on the previous year, pushing the foreign exchange reserve to a comfortable $6 billion, central bank governor Salehuddin Ahmed said.
"We've received a record $7.939 billion remittance in the outgoing fiscal year, which is up by more than 33 percent on the previous fiscal year," Bangladesh Bank general manager Nabagopal Bhowmik told newswire AFP.
"It's the biggest increase we have ever seen since our people started going abroad with jobs. If the trend continues, we will receive around $10 billion of remittance in the 2008-09 fiscal year," he said.
Bhowmik said that as well as a rise in the number of people working abroad, the introduction of strict anti-money laundering laws had also boosted the inflow of money through legitimate banking channels.
The country's overseas employment ministry said nearly 832,000 people got jobs abroad in 2007, almost double the number the previous year, mainly in oil-rich Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, and Southeast Asia.
In the first six months of 2008, a record 489,312 people, up 43 percent on the same period last year, got jobs abroad.
Many of those were now working in new European destinations such as Romania, Poland and Russia, which were increasingly employing Bangladeshi workers, ministry director Salim Reza said.
Officials count the number of Bangladeshis working and living abroad at five million, but unofficially the number is estimated to be eight million if those who have left through illegal channels are included.
Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world with a population of 144 million, counts on the inflow of foreign exchange to fund its imports.
The Bangladeshi economy grew by a healthy 6.2 percent to the year ended June 30, 2008, despite a sluggish investment climate due to a state of emergency, severe flooding and a devastating cyclone.
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