Illustrative photo (Source: VNA)HCM City (VNA) – Despite negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, remittancesHo Chi Minh City received through commercial banks and economic organisations areforecast to reach 5.5 billion USD this year, a slight increase from 2019.
In thefirst ten months, the figure was 4.7 billion USD. Some local commercial banks evenposted an annual surge in their remittances.
Deputy GeneralDirector of Sacombank Nguyen Minh Tam said the remittances sent home via hisbank in 2020 are likely to triple the figure for 2019.
Heattributed the soaring number to Sacombank’s application of its API onlinepayment method, which has facilitated its Vietnamese expatriate and guestworker customers amid the pandemic.
Theirincomes have been affected by COVID-19, but the amount of their foreigncurrencies channeled into Vietnam has gone up significantly thank to onlinetransactions, Tam said.
However,in a broader scale, negative impact of the pandemic on the flow of remittancesto Vietnam this year are unavoidable.
The WorldBank has projected that remittances to the country might drop by over 7 percentto 15.7 billion USD this year, the first reduction since 2010. In spite ofthat, in a report by the bank, Vietnam still ranked third in East Asia andPacific regions in terms of remittance volume, only after China and thePhilippines.
Can VanLuc, a banking and finance expert, said Vietnam has carried out good COVID-19prevention and control work, adding that the over-7-percent decrease can beconsidered a success given the complicated COVID-19 developments worldwide. Remittancesto the Asia-Pacific region, which has a large number of people workingoverseas, are forecast to go down by more than 10 percent this year, accordingto Luc./.
VNA
