"Nepal sees 23 percent rise in remittance inflow despite COVID-19 pandemic", 27 September 2020

Nepal was under a strict lockdown for almost five months to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the lockdown was lifted about two weeks ago, a number of sectors are still under restrictions.

Similarly, the government reopened Nepal’s foreign employment sector only on August 31. As a result of the restrictions on the movement of the foreign-bound workers, the number of Nepalis seeking final labor approval (institutional and personal-new and legalized) for foreign employment decreased by 99.2 percent during mid-July and mid August this year, according to the Current Macroeconomic Report of Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB)...

But despite the unfavorable situation, surprisingly, the remittance inflow in the first month of the current fiscal year increased by 23 percent to Rs 92.71 billion, according to the NRB report. In US Dollar terms, the growth was 14.5 percent, compared to the growth of just 0.7 percent during the review period of 2019/20, when there was no such difficult situation hitting the country’s remittance earnings.

..According to NRB officials, with the government tightening the noose on informal trade including gold purchase, the migrant workers could have been sending their money through the formal channels instead of using informal ones, including hundi and money transfers, among others...