Getting incentive against high value remittance made easy

Bangladesh Bank has further relaxed rules for getting cash incentive against high value remittance.

The central bank in a circular issued on Wednesday said 2% cash incentive against $5,000 or Tk5 lakh and above has been made easy.

It said now, a recipient of that remittance has to submit documents of remitter to the recipient’s bank branch, and the branch — after fact-checking — will send documents to the bank that originally received the remittance.

After confirmation, the receiving bank will send the cash incentive to the bank that disburses the remittance to the recipient.

“Now a beneficiary will get the incentive at the soonest. If the banks — both receiver and disbursing — are same, the process will take less time,” said a central bank official.

Remittance receivers do not need to submit documents to get cash incentive against amounts worth less than $5,000.

The central bank introduced 2% cash incentive from July 1 last year to encourage inflow of remittances through legal channels, i.e., banks and exchange houses.

The move has paid off as the country has been seeing a significant rise in inward remittances for the past few months despite the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic on global economies, including Middle Eastern countries that are the major sources of Bangladesh’s remittances.

According to the latest central bank data, Bangladeshi expatriates sent back $2.07 billion in November, up 33% year-on-year. However, the inflow was 1.6% less than that of October.

Central bank data shows the country received $10.9 billion remittance in the July-November period of this year, up over 41% from the corresponding period of last year.