DHAKA, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Millions of Bangladeshis, living and working abroad, remitted home over 12 billion U.S. dollars in the first 10 months of the current 2017-18 fiscal year ending next month, a central bank official said Tuesday.

Quoting provisional data, the Bangladesh Bank (BB) official told Xinhua that the flow of inward remittances surged about 18 percent year on year to 12,088 million U.S. dollars in July-April period of the current 2017-18 fiscal year (July 2017-June 2018).

The amount of remittance from over 10 million non-resident Bangladeshis (NRBs) , who are mostly employed in the Middle East, stood at 1.33 billion U.S. dollars last month, up over 21.47 percent from that of the same period a year earlier, said the official who preferred to be unnamed.

The flow of inward remittances in the fiscal year 2016-17 (July 2016-June 2017) fell about 14.47 percent to 12.77 billion U.S. dollars from the previous fiscal year.

Against this backdrop, Bangladesh has strengthened its efforts to send more Bangladeshis abroad with overseas employment.

Bangladeshi Minister of Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Nurul Islam has announced that the country plans to send some 1.2 million Bangladeshis abroad with overseas employment this year.

The expectation comes after over 1 million Bangladeshis found overseas jobs in 2017.

Remittances, which account for around 11 percent of the country's GDP, mainly come from countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea, among others.