Last year Indonesian workers in Malaysia sent home almost $1 billion to their families.
There are more than three million foreign workers in Malaysia, about one-third of them illegal, and most of those from neighbouring Indonesia. So senior Malaysian officials readily admit the known remittances may be well short of the true numbers.
In all, the equivalent of just over $6 billion is known to have been sent home by foreign workers in Malaysia last year, a 50% increase from 2011.
