Speedy transfers

October 19, 2006 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s People’s Bank, has tied up with global money transfer giant Western Union, to enable their customers to remit funds to their families here. "This is a 240-250 billion dollar market and we have around 16 percent of market share in this field," Kapur said. Over a million Sri Lankans living and working overseas send home around 2.2 billion dollars each year, which accounts for about 4-percent of the island’s gross domestic product.

Government-owned People’s Bank attracts around 45 billion rupees (about 450 million dollars) of the total foreign remittance market, which is currently dominated by another state bank, Bank of Ceylon.

The agreement will add 319 out of 624 People’s Bank branches to the Western Union service outlets bringing the total to over 700 outlets with the Western Union facility islandwide.

With People’s Bank’s large network of branches throughout the country forming part of our Agent network, we will reach out to more and more people across Sri Lanka, Anil Kapur, Managing Director, Western Union Services India (Pvt) Ltd said.

The remittance fees would range from 0.5 percent to around two or