by Naim-Ul-Karim DHAKA, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh expects over half a million overseas jobs for the country's skilled and semi-skilled workforce in 2010, overseas employment ministry chief said Sunday. Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, Bangladesh's Minister for Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment, told Xinhua Sunday the expectation comes after 475,278 Bangladeshis found overseas jobs in 2009 despite the global market recession constricted the opportunities for fresh employment. 'We hope that over 500,000-600,000 Bangladeshis will get employment abroad this year if the global recession recovery continues,' Hossain said. Due mainly to the global financial meltdown, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) statistics, overseas employment for Bangladeshis in 2009 registered a 45.69 percent fall year on year. In 2008, the South Asian country's overseas employment was 8,75, 055, and 8,32,609 in 2007, the BMET record showed. The latest BMET data, released Sunday, showed some 33,847 Bangladeshis found overseas jobs in January this year, which was nearly 33 lower than that in the same period a year earlier. With the ease of the global recession, Hossain said, 'The Middle Eastern countries may further resume their shutdown projects which can help us to send more manpower in the those countries.' A number of countries have emerged from the impacts of the global recession, he said adding 'New markets for Bangladeshi overseas job seekers are being created in many developed countries and we're being asked to send workers.' The minister had earlier said there is huge demand for workforce in war-ravaged Iraq and in Libya. Last year, he said, many Bangladeshi workers went to Dubai, while new working sectors created in some other Middle East Asian countries are expected to recruit more workers this year. Apart from this, a senior official of the BMET said new job sectors also opened up in Algeria, Angola, Australia, Azerbaijan, Botswana, Libya, Somalia and South Africa. To help boost overseas employment, the official on condition of anonymity said the government has opened labor wings at its diplomatic missions at Riyadh and Madina in Saudi Arabia and at Penang in Malaysia. Steps are also under way to open such wings at the country's missions in Italy, Iraq, Japan, Jordan and Sudan, he said, adding the government's measures is to keep inflow of remittances, major source of foreign currency for the country, undisturbed despite fall in overseas employment. In the last 2008-09 fiscal year (July 2008-June 2009), remittance from more than 5.5 million expatiate Bangladeshis, totaled 9.68 billion U.S. dollars, around 22.38 percent higher than that of 2007-08 fiscal year. Bangladesh in the first half of the current fiscal year 2009-10 (July 2009-June 2010) received a record 5.54 billion U.S. dollars in remittances with 22.89 percent growth, the country's central bank said last month. The bulk of remittances, which contribute to around 11 percent of the GDP for Bangladesh, comes from Middle-Eastern Asian countries including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, followed by Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Italy, Britain and the United States. 