So, the slightly better performance of inward remittance as noticed during the last two months is no guarantee that the positive trend will persist so long as exchange rates for US dollar are not uniform. In that case, the government, especially the SoBs will have to discover more innovative ways to incentivise the migrant workers so they find the official channel more lucrative than the unofficial and illegal means to send their money home. In this connection, reports that bank officials will visit different overseas countries and see for themselves the problems the migrant workers face while sending their money home and how they handle those issues and discuss ways to increase the volume of remittance flow into the country are certainly welcome. To this end, the Bangladesh Foreign Exchange Dealers Association (BAFEDA), the members of which are the chief executives of the different commercial banks, on December 14 sent letters to the banks concerned. Undoubtedly, the idea of physically meeting the migrant workers to convince them of the benefits of using formal means to remit money is a novel one. And through this personal contact, the migrant workers will get the opportunity to express their grievances, if any, as well as the hurdles they face using formal mode of money transfer. For instance, the complicated documentation process of opening bank accounts such as availability of the required papers and other such issues often act as disincentives for the migrant workers to use official channels. Admittedly, the low-paid migrant workers are either not familiar with process, or that they lack the linguistic abilities to do the formalities of filling up of forms and other related tasks on their own. Also, a significant amount of fees as service charge they have to pay against the money transferred through banks put a damper on the migrant workers' spirit to send money through official routes. Worse yet, transfer of remittance home being a rather lengthy process through formal channels, the migrant workers prefer the illegal hundi networks as their operatives go door to door to collect money from the migrant workers. As expected, these expatriate workers get the opportunity of cutting a more profitable deal with the hundi operators against the dollars they would remit to their relatives at home. The challenges, therefore, facing the government agencies like the banks to motivate the migrant workers to use official channel for money transfer is enormous. Given the way the migrant workers are treated at the Bangladesh's diplomatic missions abroad, or at the airport at home or in any other government offices, it would, understandably, be a hard sell to the migrant workers to be persuaded by any call of patriotism in this case. Still, such efforts at becoming familiar with the overseas migrant workers, it is believed, produce some results. It would be better if the responsible diplomatic officials of Bangladesh's diplomatic missions in the host countries also accompany the bank executives during those rapport-building visits with migrant workers.
But for any such moves to produce results will require addressing the basic issue of the prevailing non-uniform exchange rates for greenback against Taka. Because this is the primary cause of falling trend of remittance inflow in the country. Consider that the remittance dollars are a vital contributor to the country's foreign exchange reserve, which has been on an unabated decline since August 2021 when it was at US$48 billion. On the 13th of this month, the forex reserve stood at USD 19.16 billion. The second tranche of the IMF loan and the amount from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) will add around USD1.31 billion to the existing forex reserve. That is obviously not much to take the forex reserve situation to a comfortable level. So, of necessity, the government must continue its efforts on all fronts towards enhancing the flow of hard currency into the country.
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