Behind Bangladesh's Remittance Boom, UK Surges, US Fades and a Gulf War Risk Looms

Bangladesh's remittance story this year has largely been told through record breaking headline numbers, most recently a single day inflow of 201 million dollars on September 6 that helped push the country's foreign exchange reserves back above 36 billion dollars. But a closer look at where that money is actually coming from, and a fresh warning from Bangladesh Bank about where it might stop coming from, shows a more complicated picture underneath the record pace.

A Year of Big Swings by Country

Bangladesh received 35.59 billion dollars in remittances in the fiscal year that ended in June 2026, up 5.26 billion dollars from the 30.33 billion dollars recorded a year earlier, according to figures Expatriates' Welfare Minister Ariful Haque Choudhury disclosed in parliament in response to a question from lawmaker Nilufar Chowdhury Moni. Saudi Arabia remained the single largest source at 5.84 billion dollars, up 37 percent from 4.26 billion dollars, but the more striking mover was the United Kingdom, where inflows jumped 60 percent to 5.72 billion dollars from 3.17 billion dollars, putting it within striking distance of overtaking Saudi Arabia as Bangladesh's top remittance corridor.

Source country	FY2025-26	FY2024-25	Change
Saudi Arabia	$5.84B	$4.26B	+37%
United Kingdom	$5.72B	$3.17B	+60%
UAE	$4.58B	$4.17B	+10%
United States	$3.33B	$4.73B	-36%
Malaysia	$3.40B	$2.80B	+21%
Italy	$2.51B	$1.65B	+52%
Oman	$2.48B	$1.66B	+49%
Kuwait	$1.76B	$1.62B	+9%
Qatar	$1.55B	$1.20B	+29%
Singapore	$1.49B	$0.99B	+51%

Not every corridor moved higher. The United States, long one of Bangladesh's top five sources, fell nearly 36 percent to 3.33 billion dollars from 4.73 billion dollars, the steepest drop among major sending countries. Canada's decline was even sharper in percentage terms, though from a much smaller base, sliding roughly 50 percent to 110 million dollars from 221 million dollars. Minister Choudhury told parliament that Saudi Arabia remained the largest single source even as growth clearly broadened toward Europe, noting rising contributions from multiple Asian, European and Middle Eastern countries.

The More Recent Picture Looks Shakier

Monthly data for the start of the new fiscal year, reported by Dhaka Tribune on September 8, complicates the growth story further. Comparing July and August of FY27, remittances actually fell in six of Bangladesh's ten largest source countries even as the total edged up. Saudi Arabia slipped from 587.29 million dollars to 558.53 million dollars, a decline of 28.76 million dollars, while the United States eased from 273.18 million dollars to 266.41 million dollars. The UAE, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar all recorded smaller month on month declines as well. Offsetting that, the UK continued its rapid climb, rising from 396.74 million dollars to 458.09 million dollars in a single month, a jump of more than 61 million dollars, while Malaysia, Italy and Singapore also posted gains. On net, total monthly remittances rose from 2.8586 billion dollars in July to 2.9666 billion dollars in August, still short of the 3 billion dollar mark that had become a rough benchmark during the stronger months earlier this year.

The pattern lines up with the record setting daily figures BD Financial Review reported earlier this month, when Bangladesh brought in 637 million dollars in the first six working days of September, a 23.4 percent jump over the same period last year and a stretch that included the single day record of 201 million dollars. Taken together, the annual, monthly and daily data all point the same direction on the surface, remittances are growing and helping prop up reserves that stood at 36.38 billion dollars as of September 7. But the country level detail shows that growth is increasingly concentrated in a narrower set of corridors, chiefly the UK and a handful of European and Southeast Asian destinations, while several of the traditional Gulf and North American mainstays are either flat or in decline.

Why the Government Keeps Chasing Formal Channels

Part of why the country level breakdown matters so much is that Bangladesh has spent years trying to pull remittances away from informal hundi networks and into the banking system, chiefly through a 2.5 percent cash incentive the government pays on money sent home through formal channels. That subsidy is a big part of why the headline annual and monthly totals have kept climbing even as individual corridors wobble, migrant workers and their families have a direct financial reason to use banks and licensed money transfer operators rather than informal brokers. But the incentive works on volume that actually reaches Bangladesh through formal means in the first place, it cannot do anything to offset an outright slowdown in how much money Bangladeshi workers abroad are earning if a country they are concentrated in goes through an economic shock, which is exactly the scenario Bangladesh Bank is now warning about in the Gulf.

A New Risk on the Horizon

That concentration matters because of a risk Bangladesh Bank is now flagging openly. A large share of Bangladeshi remittances still originates in the Gulf, and the region has been rattled by escalating tensions that have pushed Brent crude above 100 dollars a barrel in recent days. A Bangladesh Bank spokesman, Arief Hossain Khan, told Dhaka Tribune plainly that "if the war is prolonged, there are concerns that expatriate income could be affected," a warning that applies directly to the roughly 10 billion dollars a year in combined remittances from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. Disruption to oil exports, shipping routes or labour markets in any of those economies would ripple quickly through to the money Bangladeshi workers there are able to send home, at a time when the central bank is leaning on remittance inflows as one of its steadier sources of foreign currency.

For now the numbers are still moving in Bangladesh's favour, and the diversification toward the UK, Italy, Malaysia and Singapore gives the country more sources to draw on than it had a few years ago, when the Gulf states and the United States dominated inflows almost entirely. But the combination of a slowing United States corridor, a shrinking Canadian one and a Middle East conflict that shows no sign of resolving quickly means the remittance engine that has helped Bangladesh manage its foreign exchange position through a difficult stretch is not as uniformly strong as the headline annual total suggests.