The Government and the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CB) are working on new benefits to Sri Lankan expatriate workers to ensure that remittances “reach their full potential in a manner that is beneficial to the worker as well as to the country”.
The CB in a media release on Wednesday said that remittances by Sri Lankans employed abroad have been an important flow of foreign exchange into the country, with an annual average value of over US$7 billion in the past five years.
In this regard, the CB is currently working in collaboration with the Ministry of Labour, State Ministry of Foreign Employment Promotion and Market Diversification and Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, the banking sector and several other stakeholders to introduce an incentive package for migrant workers, which includes pension/superannuation benefits, accident/life insurance benefits, banking facilities including low interest loans for housing and / or self-employment on return to Sri Lanka, and enhanced duty-free concessions, the statement said.
In order to ensure that the country reaps the intended benefits of providing such incentives, this package of benefits would be made available only to those who remit their earnings to Sri Lanka through the formal banking system or any other formal money transfer system routed through banking channel, and the incentives are expected to be linked to the amount of foreign exchange so remitted to Sri Lanka, the CB said asserting that remittances that come through informal channels or the ‘Hawala’ system will be shut out of this scheme
Operational details of proposed incentive package will be informed to the public in due course, in consultation with relevant Government authorities and the banking sector, it said.
In the meantime, the CBSL urges the Sri Lankan community living abroad to ensure that their remittances to Sri Lanka are being made through formal banking channels to a designated bank account in Sri Lanka so that the value of foreign exchange so remitted to Sri Lanka could be easily tracked for the above mentioned purposes.
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