Most of the money came from the US and Europe, according to Nguyen Hoang Minh, Vice Director of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV)-Ho Chi Minh City Branch.

 The remittances are now used for production and business activities and as investments, which are different from the previous purposes of making savings, spending on goods, buying estate properties and investing in stocks, he said.

 Thanks to the stable foreign exchange rate, the recipients sold between 20-35 percent of their remittances to the banks, the official reported.  Between 2011 and 2015, the remittances sent to the City saw an average rise of 10-12 percent annually.

 With the trend, the SBV-HCM City branch official predicted that the money forwarded to the City in 2016 will hit 5.7-5.8 billion USD, rising 5.6 percent from a year earlier.