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it crossed the 8 billion US dollar-mark for the first time in the
country' s history. 'The reserve crossed US dollar 8 billion and
the growth is a good sign for the economy,' Bangladesh Bank Governor
Dr Atitur Rahman told BSS here yesterday. The country needs the
reserve for keeping its economy on a strong footing, he also said.
Earlier on July 5 this year, the reserve reached $7.42 billion when
the country received a record $10 billion in remittance. A recent
study of the World Bank, Dhaka office, projected that the remittance
inflow into the country would remain over $10 billion dollars in the
current 2009- 10 fiscal year despite the fallout of the global
financial meltdown. This projection indicates that the reserve
would also maintain a strong position, a BB official said. The
official referred to the government initiatives to help boost
remittance inflow through establishing an expatriate bank, providing
training to the potential migrant workers for skill development and
setting up of labour wings in Bangladesh missions abroad to protect
the interests of country's expatriates overseas. He said these
initiatives would help maintain steady growth of the remittance and
the reserve as well. A recent report in the Bangladesh Economic
Review, however, projected a decline in the number of Bangladeshi
workers abroad. 'More than 200,000 people migrated overseas for jobs
in the first five months of this year is lower than about 3,78,000
expatriates in the same period last year,' it said. An official of
the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies said
though the overall number of outgoing workers declined, the outflow
of skilled manpower increased last year.
