Sri Lanka’s overseas migration likely to exceed 300,000 again this year

Sri Lanka’s annual overseas migration is likely to exceed 300,000 people again this year, despite earlier expectations of a decline below crisis-era levels, the head of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment said.

SLBFE Chairperson Koshala Wickremasinghe said during a television program aired Saturday that about 277,000 Sri Lankans have already left for overseas employment this year, making it likely that total departures will cross 300,000 by year’s end.

“By around the middle of 2025, we surmised that this figure would not cross 300,000. However, migration levels are now likely to exceed that threshold again,” Wickremasinghe said.

Sri Lanka recorded its highest levels of labor migration since 2014 during the 2022 economic crisis, when about 313,642 people left the country.

SLBFE data from that year showed significant outflows of professionals from the health sector, as well as engineering, architecture and information technology, along with mid-level technical workers.

Although the government expected overseas migration to ease as the economy showed signs of stabilization in 2023, departures declined by only 4.2%. In 2024, migration again surpassed 300,000, reaching 313,642 departures — exceeding even the peak seen during the crisis year.

“If you take migration data from 2019 onwards, the highest migration levels were recorded in 2024,” Wickremasinghe said, adding that 2025 figures are likely to match that level.

According to SLBFE estimates, the main destinations for Sri Lankan migrant workers in the first 10 months of this year were Kuwait, with about 66,000 departures, followed by the United Arab Emirates with 55,000, Qatar with 38,000, Saudi Arabia with 31,000 and Israel with about 10,000.

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) has yet to release its fourth-quarter bulletin on workers’ remittances and labor migration.

However, CBSL data show that Sri Lanka received $712 million in workers’ remittances during the first 10 months of the year, a 20.1% increase compared with the same period last year.