Bangladeshis send home $10.72b last year

---

Siddique Islam
Bangladeshis working abroad sent home a record US$10.72 billion in the calendar year that ended on December 31, as remittance continued to scale new heights despite the global meltdown, officials said Monday.
They said the amount is 19.39 per cent higher than what the country's more than six million workers remitted in the previous 2008 calendar year.
The country's foreign exchange reserve stood at an all time high at $10.345 billion on the day, thanks to the robust growth of remittances.
The remittances from Bangladeshi nationals working abroad were estimated at $876.33 million in December last, a fall by $174.21 million from the previous month. In November 2009, the remittance stood at $1.050 billion, according to the central bank statistics, released Monday.
"The flow of remittances is still at a satisfactory level," a senior official of the Bangladesh Bank (BB) told the FE, adding that the inflow of remittances normally fall after the Eid-ul-Azha festival.
"We're monitoring the overall inflow of remittance closely," the BB official said, adding that the total amount of remittances dropped slightly in December over that of the previous month due mainly to fewer working days.
Bangladesh expatriates sent home a record $5.535 billion in the first-half of the current fiscal, marking a 22.89 per cent growth over the same period of the previous fiscal.
The latest figure shows that despite the slowdown of overseas jobs, inflow of remittance has maintained a robust trend --- a continuation of last fiscal year when remittance grew 22.41 per cent, the BB officials added.
The central bank earlier took a series of measures to encourage expatriate Bangladeshis to send their hard earned money through formal banking channel instead of the illegal "hundi" system to boost the country's foreign exchange reserves.
As part of the measures, the BB has issued 20 more licences to the commercial banks recently for setting up exchange houses in different parts of the world aimed at expediting remittance inflow.
The central bank has also issued more clearances to the local banks for establishing contacts with overseas exchange houses through drawing arrangements.
The central bank has, so far, given approval to establish 295 exchange houses and set up 840 drawing arrangements abroad to boost flow of remittance through formal channels.
Four state-run commercial banks and dozens of private commercial banks have also stepped up efforts to increase remittance flow from the Middle East, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Italy and the United States.
"Our efforts to be continued to establish new contacts with overseas exchange houses so that our overseas workers can find it easy to send money back home," Managing Director of the National Credit and Commerce (NCC) Bank Limited Nurul Amin told the FE.
Mr. Amin also said some banks are trying to expand their network to expedite the delivery of remittances to the beneficiaries across the country.