Overseas remittance to Vietnam to reach US$8.5 B

The volume of overseas remittance to Vietnam is expected to reach $8.5 billion this year, according to the State Bank of Vietnam.

This is a record high compared to last year’s $8 billion.

The SBV said that overseas remittance reached around $2.5 billion in the first quarter of the year, $2 billion in the second quarter and US$2.5 billion in the third quarter.

Currently, more than 400,000 Vietnamese guest workers are working abroad and around 4 million Vietnamese people are residing in nearly 100 nations and territories around the world. These people annually send a huge volume of overseas remittance back home, said the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences.

The volume of overseas remittance to Vietnam made up only 4.2 percent of total Gross Domestic Product in 1999, 7.8 percent in 2002 and 7.7 percent in 2010.

 Vietnam is ranked 16th by the World Bank among nations around the globe to have received the largest amounts of overseas remittance in 2010. In South East Asia, Vietnam ranked second to the Philippines, who had $21.3 billion in 2010.