Wednesday Sep 10, 2025
Wednesday Sep 10, 2025
Monday, 8 September 2025 05:06 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Sri Lanka’s workers’ remittances surged to $ 680.8 million in August, marking the second highest monthly inflow so far in 2025, according to the latest data released by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL).
The figure reflects an 18% year-on-year (YoY) increase and represents the fifth consecutive month of record inflows, underscoring the steady recovery of foreign worker earnings.
August’s inflow is also the third-highest monthly remittance in the country’s history, behind the $ 708.09 million recorded in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic pandemic and $ 697.3 million in July 2025.
Cumulatively, workers’ remittances in the first eight months of 2025 rose 19.3% YoY to surpass $ 5.1 billion, registering the strongest performance for the period since 2020.
The year-to-date (YTD) figure also represents a 6.5% increase compared to the over $ 4.8 billion registered in the same period of 2016—the year that holds the record for the highest annual workers’ remittances inflow at $ 7.24 billion.
The sharpest post-crisis rebound was in 2023, when workers’ remittances grew by 57% to $ 5.96 billion, recovering from a 12-year low of $ 3.78 billion in 2022.
In 2024, workers’ remittances hit a four-year high of $ 6.57 billion, up by 10.1% from 2023. This growth was followed by a record wave of people seeking foreign employment after an unprecedented economic crisis.
Historically, the highest-ever annual workers’ remittances were recorded in 2016, whilst between 2014 and 2018, the annual inflows averaged around $ 7 billion, or roughly around $ 600 million per month.
