COLOMBO, March 1 (Xinhua) -- Foreign remittances to Sri Lanka have dropped by 61.6 percent in January 2022, compared to that in the same month in 2021, according to the latest central bank statistics.
In January 2021, Sri Lankans living abroad remitted 675.3 million U.S. dollars to the country. However, they only sent back 259.2 million dollars in January 2022.
Sri Lankans living abroad remitted 7.1 billion dollars in 2020 and the number dropped to 5.49 billion dollars in 2021, the central bank reported.
Sri Lankan economists believe that the drop was the result of the central bank maintaining a peg of 200-203 Sri Lankan rupees to a dollar since September 2021. However, a dollar is changing hands at about 250 rupees through unofficial channels.
According to the World Bank data in 2020, remittances by Sri Lankan workers accounted for 8.9 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and were equivalent to 63 percent of all goods exports. ■
