About 75,000 Lankans have left for foreign employment in Q1 2024
By Saman Indrajith
Around 75,000 Sri Lankans have left for overseas jobs during the first three months of 2024, the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) says.SLBFE said yesterday (04) that 74,499 Sri Lankan workers had left for foreign employment, and 46 percent of them were women.
There has been a slight drop in comparison to the corresponding period in 2023, when 76,025 Sri Lankans went overseas for employment.SLBFE said Sri Lankans prefered jobs in countries like South Korea, Israel and Japan.
About 17,793 of foreign employment seekers had left for Kuwait, 2,374 to South Korea, 2,114 to Israel, 1,899 to Romania, and 1,947 to Japan during the first quarter of 2024, SLBFE said.
Sri Lankan migrant workers had remitted USD 963.8 million in the first two months of 2024, SLBFE said. According to the Central Bank data remittances from foreign workers were the top foreign exchange earner in the first two months of 2024.
The other top foreign exchange earners were garments (803.4 million dollars), tourism (687.5 million dollars), tea (229.9 million dollars), petroleum products exports (177.3 million dollars), rubber product exports (166.4 million dollars), and IT and ITES exports (102 million dollars).
