B'desh expat remittances up 19.4 pct in March yr/yr

DHAKA, Apr 10 (Reuters) Bangladesh expatriates sent home 8.01 million in March, up 19.4 percent from a year earlier and a record inflow in a single month, central bank officials said on Monday.

Remittance inflows in July-March, the first three quarters of the 2005/2006 fiscal year, were around 24 percent higher than the same period of the previous financial year, at .476 billion.

Bangladesh's financial year runs from July to June.

Bangladesh Bank was expecting that the inflow of remittances would touch .5 billion by the end of this fiscal year, officials said.

''As we are strictly following an anti-money laundering act, the expatriates are using the formal banking channels which also has been boosting the inward remittances,'' Nazmul Hasan, an executive director of Bangladesh Bank, told Reuters.

Recent depreciation of Bangladesh's taka against dollar had also encouraged expatriates to send more money back home, he added.

Remittances are a major input to the Bangladesh economy.

The country's foreign exchange reserves stood at .021 billion on Monday.

''During the last four years we have sent 1.2 million Bangladeshis to different countries with new jobs which also helped us to sustain upward growth,'' state minister for expatriates' welfare and overseas employment Mohammed Quamrul Islam told Reuters on Monday.

''Our focus is to send skilled and trained people. We also briefed them before sending them abroad.'' Moreover, the finance ministry took a number of steps so that beneficiaries can receive the money within a possible shortest time, the minister added.

About 3 million Bangladeshis and people of Bangladeshi origin work abroad, mostly in the Middle East, the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore.

In 2005, 250,000 Bangladeshis went abroad with jobs compared to 271,000 in 2004.

Officials said the main reason for the decline was a job nationalisation policy in Saudi Arabia.

(US = 69.73 taka) REUTERS PV DS1145