A large part of the amount of money that expatriates send from abroad every month comes to the bank branches located in Dhaka district. That is, most of the families of expatriates stay in Dhaka or they have most of their accounts in the bank branches of Dhaka. Chittagong ranks second in terms of expatriate income and remittances.

And behind Chittagong are Sylhet and Comilla. After that, the location of Brahmanbaria, Feni, Moulvibazar, Chandpur and Narsingdi districts along with the coastal district of Noakhali. This figure is from July last year to February this year, which is presented in Bangladesh Bank’s district-wise expatriate income report.

According to the report of the central bank, in the last eight months of July-February, expatriates sent money equivalent to 1 thousand 507 million dollars to the country. Out of this, they sent 216 million 46 million dollars last February. In the previous month of January, the expatriate income in the country was 2100 million dollars.

According to the data of Bangladesh Bank, Dhaka district received 523 million dollars in July-February and Chittagong district received 142 million dollars in expatriate income. During this period, Sylhet district received 87 crores, Comilla 81 crores and Noakhali 46 crores. Apart from this, 38 crores came in Brahmanbaria, 37 crores in Feni, 36 crores in Moulvibazar, 35 crores in Chandpur and 25 crores in Narsingdi.

Bank officials say more income is expected to come from expatriate-dominated districts. But that is not the reason why many expatriates have settled abroad. Rather, they are selling the wealth in the country and taking it abroad and this is increasing money laundering.

The expatriate income situation was not very promising for most of last year. Towards the end, remittances started to increase. For example, last December, expatriate income came to the country of 198 million 98 million dollars, which was 193 million dollars in November. In total, in 2023, the expatriate income in the country was 2 thousand 190 million dollars. In the previous year, i.e. in 2022, 2 thousand 130 million dollars came. That is, in 2023, the growth of expatriate income was about 3 percent. Before this, in 2021, 2 thousand 207 million dollars, 2 thousand 173 million dollars in 2020 and 1 thousand 833 million dollars in 2019 came to the country.

The official dollar price in banks for buying expatriate income is now Tk 110. However, due to the dollar-crisis, banks are buying expatriate income at a higher price. Due to this, expatriate income is increasing through legal means. Bank officials believe that some people are returning the money smuggled out of the country by showing it as expatriate income.

Bangladesh Foreign Exchange Dealers Association (BAFEDA) and Association of Bankers Bangladesh (ABB) have been fixing the dollar exchange rate from time to time depending on the supply and demand of dollars. These two organizations are mainly related to commercial banks.

Due to the dollar-crisis, various experiments were carried out on its price last year, buying expatriate income at higher prices, giving incentives to increase the flow of expatriate income. However, for most of the last year, expatriate income through legal channels did not increase at the desired rate. Banks, however, are now giving an equal amount of incentives themselves in addition to the two and a half percent incentive from the government.