Bangladesh boasts a record in remittance inflow with the annualised figure having gone up to $ 35.56 billion in the just-past fiscal year, providing some relief amid economic strains.
Overall remittance inflows in 2025-2026 grew 17.30 per cent year on year from $30.33 billion recorded in the previous fiscal year (FY'25) by official count.
Economists and officials say the remittance upturn in these troubled times bring some sort of relief to the $500-billion-plus economy in managing its external accounts amid declining growth in export earnings.
According to the latest data with Bangladesh Bank (BB), with June's provisional count of $2.80 billion the total remittance netting in FY26 came to $35.56 billion, $5.23-billion higher from the FY'25 receipt.
The central bank says the FY26 remittance data are provisional as it had not received data from 11 banks because of the yearend bank holiday.
Despite such an upturn, the concerning part is that the remittance growth in FY26 slowed from the previous year FY'25 when Bangladesh recorded a 27-percent increase--the highest growth in the last five financial years, from FY'24 figure of $23.91 billion.
Assistant spokesperson for BB Mohammad Shahriar Siddiqui says Bangladeshi expatriate workers sent increased amounts of money back home to their family members through official channel, which helps increase the inflow.
"But the actual remittance figure in the just-concluded month of June will increase further because we cannot collect remittance-related data from 11 banks due to bank holiday," he says.
Mr. SIddiqui, also a director of the central bank, says the banking regulator keeps taking various steps like ensuring disbursement of incentives by the banks, digital transformation to ease the money transfer and regular monitoring on informal cross-border money-transfer system to facilitate remittance inflow.
Hailing the record remittance inflow, Director-General of Bangladesh Institute of Bank Management (BIBM) Dr Md. Ezazul Islam has said the growing inflow of remittance helps manage external accounts amid declining growth in export earnings.
"The geopolitical tensions in the Gulf countries have eased now. So, reconstruction activities in those major destinations of Bangladeshi migrant workers will be happening. So, I think the upward trend in remittance inflow will continue in the coming months," he told The Financial Express.
But the banking regulator needs to maintain the stability in the exchange rate so that the remitters do not feel hesitant in sending money back home on assumption that the exchange rate may rise further, according to him.
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