Sri Lanka’s monthly passport issues have declined in the first quarter of 2024 compared to a year earlier, but labour migration is still continuing at around the same pace, official data showed.
Sri Lanka’s passport issue surged in from 2022 where the most severe currency crisis triggered by the central bank it is history hit the island while outmigration also picked up.
From the last quarter of 2023, new passport issues started to ease.
In the first quarter of 2024, 220,161 passports were issued, down from 282,625 a year earlier, data from the central bank showed.
Departures for foreign work in the first quater was 85,175 persons, up from 76,024.
Most of the departures are to currency board like regimes in the Middle East, where there is no bureaucratically decided policy rate and the countries have exceptional stability leading to the import of labour.
Sri Lanka also used to import labour and was a outward remittance country when a central bank was set up in 1950 with a policy rate.
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