The growth was impressive considering the difficulties posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The remittances went mainly into manufacturing and other businesses. This year the city is expected to get around 6.5 billion USD worth of remittances. For many years they have been rising, and the city accounts for half of the country’s remittances. Around two million people hailing from HCM City live abroad, and last year they sent home 6.1 billion USD, up 15 percent from 2019, before the pandemic struck. Banks have been making investments to improve remittance services and launching promotional programmes to attract more of them. Vietnam received 17.2 billion USD worth of remittances last year, the third highest in the East Asia and Pacific./.