hawala (trust) and undial informal remittance networks (these being popular for irregular migrants). At the same time, di erent types of Sri Lankan migrants coped with the economic impacts of Covid-19 di erently. Weeraratne said skilled migrants were able to nd new jobs or were able to sustain their stays abroad until new jobs came. But lower-skilled migrants who lost jobs “were a ected more adversely,” Weeraratne said. Odd, puzzling POLITICAL Scientist Tasneem Siddiqui of the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research (RMMRU) in Bangladesh was “quite puzzled” at the remittance upsurge in her country. Siddiqui told a February 9 webinar organized by the nonpro t Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) that a survey she did revealed that 60 percent of migrant households did not receive money from June to August. Those who were sending money were mostly women, with men getting displaced from work. Saying also that informal remittances went to formal banking channels, Siddiqui said Covid-19 “may have exposed certain elements” in the country’s remittance industry and even some issues facing Bangladeshi migrant workers. An example she gave is that Bangladeshi migrants spend $3,000 on average for “visa purchases” for them to go to Middle East and Southeast Asian destination countries. That leads to some $1.74 billion of visa fees that recruitment agencies in Bangladesh “did not have to pay to purchase the visa,” Siddiqui said. Remittance transactions ASIAN Development Bank (ADB) Analysts Aiko Takenaka, Kijin Kim and Raymond Gasper noted that nine countries in Asia and the Paci c registered increases in 9-month remittances year-on-year. The ADB economists concurred with Caron, Tiongson, Weeraratne and Siddiqui on increased transactions using migrants’ savings and in preparing for returns home, plus increased digital remittance transactions. There are three other reasons, the ADB analysts add. One is that the deployment of migrant workers resumed in some countries (e.g., Thailand allowing migrants from Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar and Viet Nam to return if they have proper paperwork). Another is that migrants needed to send more incomes home given the nancial needs of families at home. 0:00 5:07