State banks eye more foreign remittances

Sanjeevi Jayasuriya

The state banks will play a proactive role in attracting foreign remittances to the country this year.

This is with the introducing of a novel approach to encourage more remittances.

The inflow of foreign remittances to the country will be increased this year with the measures taken by state banks and People’s Bank will facilitate an increased volume of remittances contributing to increase the foreign reserve level in the country.

The remittances will see a marked increase with promotional activities aimed at integrated focus to channel them through the banking system, People’s Bank acting General Manager and Chief Executive Officer N. Vasantha Kumar said.

Most of the remittances to the country are channelled through informal avenues and this has resulted in the low level of remittances.

“We need to encourage remittances to be channelled through the banking system for the benefit of the country,” he said.

The volume of remittances recorded US $ 4 billion last year with plans to increase the level to reach US $ 7 billion by 2016.

Most of the remittances to the country flow from the Middle East where nearly 50 percent of the migrants are working at present.

It is estimated that there is a total of over two million migrant workers currently.

There is also an increase in remittances from the diaspora and this is a positive trend.

“We need to make efforts to attract more to the country by offering efficient service delivery,” he said.

“Sri Lanka has an opportunity to increase remittance inflow levels from countries such as Australia and Canada.

There are no proper channels made available to tap these remittances at present.

If the country is able to capture this opportunity there will be a huge increase in the remittances,” Kumar said.