Foreign remittances:

Lifeline of economy- Amunugama

Foreign remittances have become a lifeline of the Sri Lankan economy, said Senior Minister for International Monetary Cooperation Dr Sarath Amunugama, while declaring open the Asian Forum on Remittances and Development held in Colombo.

This regional meeting was organized by the Sarvodaya Economic Development Division with the participation of senior bankers, migration institutions and the UNDP.

Dr Amunugama said that during the difficult days of 2008 and 2009 foreign remittances enabled Sri Lanka to pay for oil imports in spite of the oil crisis that hit the global economy at that time.

He further said that foreign remittances must be looked upon as a part of the wider phenomena at migration of labour from developing countries to advanced countries.

Now labour is also going beyond national boundaries, creating counter-cyclic movements to the spread of capital. While capital flows moves eastwards, labour flows move westwards. Today economies of countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Philippines and Korea have benefited from such mass migration of labour.

The Minister also drew special attention to the fact that while developing countries gets the benefit of such foreign currency inflows, the poor also benefitted.

Since, many of the migrant workers come from the lagging regions of the country, this helps to inject new funds into rural areas, which is in keeping with Government policies.

If this money is not injected to rural areas, there would be a growing gap between the rich and the poor in our country. As a MP representing a rural area, he could say that a large number of houses, vehicles, small enterprises etc., in village areas have emerged due to the money pumped in by poor migrant workers," he said.

Senior Minister Dr Amunugama also said that, but for about million and half Sri Lankans working abroad there would be rampant unemployment in Sri Lanka.