Finance Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali in his budget speech has focused only on the past achievements of the government in introducing different facilities for the expatriate workers instead of offering anything new for them.

While placing the proposed budget for FY2024-25 in parliament on Thursday, Ali said the government is eyeing to establish 50 more technical training centres (TTCs) in addition to the existing 104 TTCs to ensure trade-based training.

He has not mentioned anything about increasing cash incentives on remittances.

Migration experts, however, said that if even the finance minister increased the cash incentives on remittances it would not bring any positive impact as banking or formal channels are not able to offer the dollar rate that the irregular channels offer the expatriate workers.

“Actually, if the new budget proposed a better rate in cash incentives on remittances, the expatriate workers would not grab its benefits. It will work only if the government offers a balanced dollar rate through banking channels to reduce the tendency of sending money through illegal channels like hundi,” Shariful Hasan, associate director of Migration and Youth Platform at BRAC, told the Daily Sun.

He said despite contributing to the country’s economy by bringing $22 billion in remittance, the expatriate workers have remained unrecognised or less recognised.

“The government could offer smart cards to the expatriate workers and their family members so that they could enjoy special privileges in receiving government services,” Shariful said, adding that still the bodies of the deceased workers are brought to the country spending their own money, which is really unfortunate.

The finance minister in his speech informed the House that a total of 97,07,250 workers from Bangladesh, including 10,85,117 female workers, were employed in 176 countries across the world in the last 14 years until 2023 and consequently, the amount of remittances doubled from $10.99 billion (in FY2009-10) to $21.61 billion (in FY2022-23).

As many as 13,70,070 individuals received skill development training through various technical training centres from 2009 to 2023, he added.

Ali said the government allocated Tk500 crore to the Probashi Kallyan Bank to provide loans to expatriate workers returning home and some 12,890 borrowers have received Tk293.65 crore as loans till March 2024.

He also said that Tk19.62 crore has been provided in financial assistance for the treatment of 2,085 returning expatriate workers from 2010 to February 2024.

Besides, according to his speech, the government offered financial grants of Tk1,436.76 crore to the families of the deceased migrant workers from 2009 to February 2024.