USD 577.5 million received from expatriate workers during August

Colombo, September 11 (Daily Mirror) - The amount of remittance sent to Sri Lanka in August this year has increased by 11 percent when compared with August of last year, the Bureau of Foreign Employment said.

They said USD 577.5 million were received from the expatriate workers during last month through the legal baking system. After President Ranil Wickremesinghe took office, a total of USD 12.4 billion has been received as foreign remittances.

However, USD 4,288 million in foreign remittances were received from the expatriate workers during this year.

Positive responses were received from the expatriate workers following a request by the President to send at least USD 500 million per month through the legal system to eliminate oil, gas and milk powder queues and to import essential goods needed for the country.

Since March last year, the amount of remittances sent by expatriate workers exceeded the USD 500 million mark and this had continuously exceed the USD 500 million limit for the past seven months.

The Labour and Foreign Employment Ministry had also worked to provide various incentives, including providing electric vehicle import permits, multi-purpose loans at low interest and housing loan schemes for workers who send money to the country through the legal system.