The United Arab Emirates has become the highest source of remittance for Bangladesh with around US$4.6 billion in the just concluded fiscal year 2023-24, according to Bangladesh Bank data.
Total remittance inflow to the country surged in the latter half of the fiscal year, reaching a three-year high of $23.91 billion. This marks a significant 10.64% increase compared to the previous year.
Of this, the country received more remittances from the UAE than its traditionally key source Saudi Arabia.
The second-highest volume of remittances came from the USA, followed by the United Kingdom as third and Saudi Arabia as fourth.
But Saudi Arabia has always been the highest remittance source for Bangladesh.
In the FY 2023-24, expatriates sent home $4.6 billion from the UAE and $2.74 billion from Saudi Arabia, the central bank data showed.
Remittances from the US and UK also went up to $2.96 billion and $2.79 billion respectively.
According to the Bangladesh Bank data, in the FY 2022-23, expatriates sent $3.77 billion from Saudi Arabia and $3.03 billion from the UAE.
In the FY 2021-22, Bangladeshi expatriates in Saudi Arabia sent $4.54 billion and $2.08 billion, less than half of that from Saudi Arabia, came from the UAE.
The UAE was the third highest source of expatriate income in those two fiscal years. The second highest source was the USA.
According to the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) data, the top labour market for Bangladesh is Saudi Arabia. Since 1976, 36% of the Bangladeshi labourers have gone to the country.
Until May of FY24, around 11.42 lakh people left Bangladesh for work abroad compared to 11.37 lakh in FY23. In FY22, around 9.88 lakh people went abroad for employment, the data showed.
Dr Ahsan H Mansur, executive director of the Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh, said that expats are getting Tk3-4 more per dollar when sending remittances from the UAE.
Although the capital of the UAE is Abu Dhabi, the economic activities of the country are conducted around Dubai.
Because of that, a large part of remittances from other countries in the Middle East including Saudi Arabia are now coming through Dubai, he said.
Bankers said remitters sent more money through banking channels in FY24 as the dollar rate was better than the previous years.
On 8 May, the central bank introduced the crawling peg exchange rate system, allowing banks to buy and sell US dollars within a fixed band at around Tk117.
The inter-bank exchange rate stood at Tk118 per dollar yesterday.
In FY24, of the top 10 remittance source countries, others included Malaysia $1.6 billion, Italy $1.46 billion, Kuwait $1.5 billion, Qatar $1.15 billion, Oman $1.12 billion and Bahrain $639 million.
