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DHAKA, April 4 (Reuters) Bangladesh in March received a record monthly high of $1.09 billion in remittances from citizens abroad, despite the departure of some workers from turmoil-hit North Africa and the Middle East, the central bank said on Monday.
The March figure compared with $956.5 million a year earlier.
The central bank said that remittances for the first nine months of the current fiscal year, from July through March, were $8.6 billion. That compared with $8.3 billion in the same period one year earlier.
Remittances from more than 7 million citizens working abroad are critical for Bangladesh. They offset its trade deficit and have kept the country's overall balance of payments in surplus in recent years.
For the fiscal year that ended in June 2010, remittances totalled $10.97 billion, 13 percent above the previous year.
At the end of March, foreign exchange reserves fell to $10.73 billion from $11.16 billion in February on the back of higher costs for imports.
Analysts say Bangladesh should now tap the labour market in quake and tsunami-hit Japan which needs people for its reconstruction, as thousands of Bangladeshis are fleeing from troubles Libya and Middles East countries.
Majority of Bangladesh expatriates are employed in those countries and lion share of the remittances come from there.
The return of thousands of workers from Libya and other nations is likely to have a lasting impact on Bangladesh's economy and jeopardise the government's growth target of 6.7 percent this fiscal year, analysts have said. (Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Ron Askew)