Illustrative image (Source: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – The increasing amountsof remittances sent back to the homeland by overseas Vietnamese over the pastfew years have helped the country offset its trade deficit, reduce poverty, andimprove living standards of recipients.
Currently, nearly 4.5 million Vietnamese people areliving and working in over 100 countries and territories around the world.
In 2000, Vietnamese expatriates sent 1.75billion USD to the homeland, which went up 117 percent to touch 3.8 billion USDin 2005.
The volume continued climbing to 8 billion USDin 2010. Also that year, Vietnam was ranked 16th out of the 20 nationsreceiving the biggest amounts of remittances by the World Bank, and the secondin Southeast Asia, after the Philippines.
In 2013, Vietnam entered the top 10 recipientsof remittances with 11 billion USD. The country was ranked third in Asia and11th in the globe in attracting remittances in 2015, with over 13.2 billionUSD.
In the 2002-2015 period, the flow of remittanceswas equivalent to 6 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) and nearlyequivalent to foreign direct investment (FDI) which made up 7.7 percent of GDP,and doubling official development assistance (ODA) capital that accounted for 3percent of GDP.
Despite a decline, the volume of remittancestransferred to the country still reached about 9 billion USD in 2016.
Over 70 percent of the remittances are pouredinto production and business while 20 percent are injected into real estate.
The remittances have helped Vietnam have astable source of foreign currency earnings, increase the national foreign currencyreserves, and reduce its dependence on foreign capital and pressure from the USDexchange rate.
Ho Chi Minh City is leading the nation in attractingremittances. According to the State Bank of Vietnam’s branch in HCM City,around 50 percent of the remittances transferred to Vietnam go to the southernmetropolis.
The city received about 5.5 billion USD ofremittances in 2015, a year-on-year rise of 10 percent. The figure dropped to 5billion USD in 2016.
More than 80 percent out of 1,100 overseasVietnamese-invested enterprises are operating in HCM City.-VNA
VNA
