Remittance may face serious setback due to Libyan crisis

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Country's remittance earning that witnessed a balanced trend in recent months might face serious setback in the coming days due to uprising in Libya, which forced many Bangladeshi workers to return home, reports UNB. The present crisis is likely to have further adverse impact on Bangladesh's overseas labour market and balance of payments. According to the leaders of Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA), over 80,000 Bangladeshis work in Libya. "Definitely, remittance inflow will drop significantly following crisis in Libya. It might have impact on the overall economy of Bangladesh," BAIRA president Abul Bashar told the news agency over phone. He said over 80,000 Bangladeshis, mostly technical and skilled, had been working in Libya. The workers from strife-torn Libya have started returning home and if this continues Bangladesh will be deprived of a substantial amount of remittance. Replying to a question, the BAIRA chief said they talked to the officials of some companies in Libya, who assured them that they would take back their Bangladeshi workers once normalcy is restored in the West African country. Former BAIRA president Ghulam Mustafa said overall remittance inflow to the country would come down drastically if the present crisis in Libya and some other Middle-Eastern countries continues for long. He said it will have serious impact on the country's overall economy, including balance of payment situation and foreign exchange reserve. He suggested forming a national committee with representatives of Foreign and Labour ministries as well as other stakeholders to cope with the situation and explore new labour markets. Replying to a query, Mustafa said the government should take immediate steps to arrange sending the returnee Bangladeshis from Libya to other friendly countries. He said that Kuwait has not been recruiting workers from Bangladesh for nearly eleven years while Saudi Arabia did not recruit Bangladeshis in the last seven years. According to the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) analysis, the first half of the current fiscal has posed formidable challenges for the country in terms of the number of workers going abroad and remittance flow. Number of migrant workers has decreased by almost half compared to average figure for comparable periods of fiscals 2006-07 and 2007-08. It said there has been a significant deceleration in the growth of remittance inflow to Bangladesh during the first five months (July-November) of current fiscal. Total remittance inflow declined by 1.7 per cent during the period compared to the same period of previous fiscal (2009-10). Our Staff Correspondent adds: The flow of inward remittances increased slightly last month over that of the previous month despite less working days, officials said. Bangladeshi nationals working abroad sent US$974.46 million in 18 working days of February last, up by $3.92 million from the previous month. In January 2011, the remittance was $970.54 million, according to the central bank statistics released Thursday. "The inflow of remittance is still in a stable position. But we are very much cautious about the Middle East situation," a senior official of the Bangladesh Bank (BB) told the FE. He also said the central bank is observing the latest developments in the Middle East countries closely. The country received $7.495 billion during the July-February period of fiscal 2010-11, registering a 2.49 per cent growth over the same period of the previous fiscal, the BB's data showed. The central bank of Bangladesh 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. Currently, some private commercial banks along with the state-owned commercial banks are trying to increase the flow of inward remittances from the Middle East, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Italy and the United States. "We're establishing new contacts with overseas exchange houses so that our migrant workers could find it easy to send money back home," a senior official of a leading commercial bank told the FE, adding that some banks were trying to set up their own exchange houses in different parts of the world. The country's foreign exchange reserve stood at $11.23 billion Thursday, despite nominal growth of remittance from Bangladeshis working abroad, the BB officials added.