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Manpower export witnessed a tremendous growth in the first four months of 2022.
The growth was 136 percent higher than the corresponding period of the previous year.
In four months from January to April, the country sent 4, 26,558 people to abroad for works. During the same period of the previous year 1, 81, 040 people went abroad for the same.
The majority of them went to Saudi Arabia, Oman and United Arab Emirates (UAE). Some 2, 68, 584 people went to Saudi Arabia which was 62.9 percent of the total migrants followed by 56, 830 in Oman (13.32%), 51,531 in United Arab Emirates (12.8%), 18,606 in Singapore (4.36%), 6654 in Jordan (1.56%), 6, 241 in Qatar (1.46%) and the rest were sent to other countries.
Among those who went abroad in the first four months, some 109, 698 went in January, 92,569 in February, 1, 20, 316 in March and 1, 03, 975 in April.
Shameem Ahmed Chowdhury Noman, former secretary general of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BIRA), said on average 1 lakh people had gone abroad as workers for the last six month.
Saudi Arabia received the most Bangladeshi workers following the price hike of oil generating more jobs there, Noman said.
On the other hand, the UAE market is now open for Bangladeshis. They were sourcing from Bangladesh by issuing visitor visa earlier. Now they have been issuing employment visa for the last three month resulting in manpower export boom, Noman said.
He expected that this calendar year might break all the record of manpower export in a single year if the flow continued.
In this regard, Malaysia is a very important country for Bangladesh to send workers there in record number if syndication of recruiting agencies can be dismantled.
There will be no problem to send 10-12 lakh workers every year to three countries - Saudi Arabia, UAE and Malaysia, Noman said.
Since 2011, 5 to 7.5 lakh workers had gone abroad every year. In 2017, the number crossed 10 lakhs. However during the pandemic period in 2020, the number dropped to 2, 17, 269.
Retaining the existing market should be the first priority and diversification of markets has to be another priority to continue the manpower export growth and remittance inflow.
For this reason a policy is needed as Bangladesh is weak in negotiation. There is a shortage of trained
manpower. A trained worker may earn three times higher than a non-trained worker, former BIRA Secretary General added.
Remittance also increased significantly in the first four months of 2022 compared to the same period of the previous year. The country will witness further increase in remittance inflow in the years to come, experts said.
The country received remittance worth $7,721.12 million in the first four months of the current calendar year. It was $7,070.08 million during the same period of the last year. Remittance inflow increased by 9.20 percent this year compared to the same period of the previous year.
Remittance inflow will increase further in the future. Upcoming Eid-ul-Adha is one of the reasons. Another reason is the increase in dollar price. It seems a double incentive for remitters, Zaid Bokht, Research Director of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, said.
Bokth, also the Chairman of Agrani Bank, said, “I am urging all the banks to pay the fair price of dollar so that people get interested to send remittance in a proper way bypassing Hundi, an unethical way of sending money.”
