Remittance flows to stay positive

By Uditha Jayasinghe

MoneyGram, a key remittance player, says that the political crisis affecting the Middle East will not hamper inflows to Sri Lanka.

MoneyGram International Regional Director – South Asia Harsh Lambah told Daily FT that the company was confident of growth in the South Asian region and that the present crisis across several Middle East countries including Libya and Egypt would not have an adverse impact on remittances.

“You would be amazed at how versatile workers from South Asia are, they can be found everywhere! If jobs in the Middle East are scarce, then they will simply find employment elsewhere. MoneyGram is very bullish about remittance growth in this region and we are fully confident that our expectations will be fulfilled,” he said.

Dozens of workers have been returning to Sri Lanka from Libya due to the political crisis. Last week it was reported that 15 workers of a group of 36 who were moved to Egypt escaped to avoid returning to Sri Lanka.

Fears were expressed that if the trend continues, Sri Lanka’s US$ 4.1 billion remittance revenue would drop. During 2009, a total number of 247,119 workers had migrated for foreign employment purposes. Amongst them, 43,744 had migrated to Qatar and 42,400 had migrated to Kuwait.    

Lambah insisted that with the end of the war, Sri Lanka had great opportunities to grow in the remittances industry and expressed confidence that while the island would not come close to India’s hefty US$ 55 billion, the country nonetheless had the chance to increase money inflows.

He pointed out that MoneyGram had increased its presence in the north and east by tying up with its banking partners and that next to Colombo, the highest revenue was from the Eastern Province. While refusing to give specific numbers, he expressed the warmest confidence for this trend to continue.