Remittances to Ho Chi Minh City are expected to reach some 5.3 billion USD in 2019.(Photo: tinnhanhchungkhoan.vn)
HCM City (VNA) – Remittances to Ho Chi Minh City are expected to reach some 5.3 billion USD in 2019, a year-on-year surge of 9 percent, despite unfavourable global financial and monetary market, according to Deputy Director of the State Bank of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City branch Nguyen Hoang Minh.
Minh said that Vietnamese expatriates remitted roughly 4.3 billion USD to the southern hub as of the end of November.
The flow of money has played an important role in economic development as well as stability of foreign currency supply in the city, he stressed.
Vietnam was expected to remain one of the top ten remittance recipients in 2019, according to the latest edition of the World Bank’s Migration and Development Brief.
Around 16.7 billion USD in remittances was projected to flow into Vietnam for the full year, making the Southeast Asian country the ninth largest remittance recipient – in dollar terms – in the world.
The figure inches up against 16 billion USD in 2018, and accounts for some 6.4 percent of the country’s GDP.
In East Asia and Pacific region, Vietnam is expected to rank third in terms of remittances after China and the Philippines.
Financial and banking expert Nguyen Tri Hieu said that the country’s high remittance flow was mainly because Vietnamese people working abroad believed in the stability of the economy and saw better investment opportunities in the domestic market.
He said that remittances to Vietnam were largely used to invest in production, business and the real estate market.
Remittances to Vietnam have kept rising for the past two decades, from more than 1.3 billion USD in 2000 to 16 billion USD last year (except the year of 2009 due to adverse impacts of the global financial crisis)./.
VNA
