/Migrants-Waiting-in-Line.jpg "Nepali migrant workers gather outside the Tribhuvan International Airport terminal. The overseas labor sector has been heavily affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Anish Regmi/The Kathmandu Post/File")
Over the past decade, remittances from abroad have soared from $2.54 billion to $8.75 billion, increasing more than threefold. The migration of labor is crucial to the Nepalese economy. From 2009 to 2019, the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE) issued nearly 4 million work permits to Nepali migrants. Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Malaysia are the top five labor migration destination countries out of 110.
As the inclination of Nepalese employees to emigrate has increased over the past decade, the Nepalese macroeconomic environment has focused intensely on remittance inflow. In 2019/2020, Nepal received remittances totaling Rs. 875 billion, corresponding to a remittance to GDP ratio of 23.23 percent. Consequently, Nepal appears to be a remittance-based nation, with remittances accounting for more than a quarter of the country's GDP.
In the fiscal year 2078 (BS), the Department of Foreign Employment granted 3,11,736 application requests for foreign employment. Among those, 2,85,913 were men, and the remaining 25,823 were women.
Among the 872 registered workforce agencies in Nepal, only 62 could not send a single person abroad for foreign employment.
Paradise International, located in Bakhundol, Lalitpur sent a total of 6,055, among which 4,925 were men and 1,130 were women in the fiscal year 2078/79. Consequently, it also became the first manpower agency to achieve that number.
Similarly, SOS manpower service came in second with 5,724, which consisted of 5,309 men and 415 women.
The foreign employment department publishes the list of manpower at the end of every year.
