Rising manpower export is good news for country

Finally, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel with remittance ticking up as manpower exports has hit a new record high this year. Between January and November a total of 10, 24, 458 workers went to different countries which surpassed the record of 10, 08, 525 people in 2017.

The figure is the highest since 1976. Obviously it is good news for the country at a time when the country is passing through a critical juncture especially economically. It is the manpower export that has been helping the country to stay afloat by contributing to the foreign currency reserve. By doing so, our migrant workers have long been contributing immensely to the country’s economy.

Before February last year when the Russia-Ukraine war broke out the forex reserve of the country was over $48 billion. After the war had broken out it began to plummet with each day passing. Now it stands at a bit more than $33 billion, according to the data of Bangladesh Bank. The answer to the question to why our country is not going to be like Sri Lanka lies mostly in our manpower export.

Of course, there are two other reasons – one is our agricultural output and garment export – for which the country can still resist the pressure on its central dollar reserve. The Business Post on December 03 ran a report on Bangladesh’s manpower export where it said how after corona pandemic the manpower export began to rise from the month of January this year.

According to the report, the country saw a tremendous rise in manpower export from January to November this year with the increasing demand for workers in the destination countries. Director General (planning) of the Bureau of Employment and Training Md Shahidul Alam attributed the reason for such rise to getting loans and available government migration services.

Shahidul said: “Aspiring migrants are getting loans and availing the government’s migration services have become easier and demand for Bangladeshi migrant workers are also on the rise in different countries. All these reasons have contributed to the rise in this year’s record high manpower exports.” At present Bangladesh is the seventh largest remittance receiving country in the world. “Apart from general workers we also want to send skilled ones such as doctors and nurse abroad which will increase our remittance,” he said.

Meanwhile, only a couple of days before the government took a timely decision to increase the flow of remittance through proper channels. On November 29 the Foreign Exchange Policy Department of Bangladesh Bank in a circular said it would now allow Mobile Financial Service Providers (MFS) like bKash, Rocket and Upay to directly repatriate wage remittances in association with internationally recognized online payment gateway service providers, banks, digital wallets, card schemes and aggregators abroad.

The decision of the government to allow MFS to directly repatriate wage remittance and the recent rise of manpower exports might bail the government out of the prevailing volatile economic situation. Apart from this, if the concerned department of the government now focuses on how more and more workers can be sent abroad and accordingly devise new policies that could help it come out of this economic situation the country is facing now. We believe if the government can take measures against frauds for whom, migrant workers are very often deceived and forced to come back home empty-handed aspiring migrant workers will not lose their faith in the migration procedure. It will increase the number. At the same time if the government increases the incentive against the remittance it will not only enhance our foreign reserve it will also stop sending money through informal channels.