A victim of wrong perceptions?
IN the Philippines, any act at undermining manpower export is considered an act of treason against the state with specific penal provisions. Moreover, their president allocates a particular day every year to be personally present at the airport to see-off and receive expatriates. Such a gesture of honor shows the importance the Philippines, a role model to other sending countries, attaches to migrant workers. No wonder, they net about $16 billion in yearly remittance with foreign currency reserve settled around $35 billion. Just compare this with our $10 billion remittance and reserve of $8 billion. It signifies the difference in importance each country attaches to this golden goose of its economy.
How is this sector looked at in Bangladesh? Distorted focus and inept role of its trade body have given scope to media to portray this sector as a club of greedy recruiters. The society rebels at the very mention of adam bepari, and policy makers steer clear of uttering anything positive about this sector.
Policy makers seem to suffer from perception deficiency syndrome. They forget that command economics neither did work during the regime of the last CTG, nor will it now or ever. No wonder the high migration cost vis-à-vis government's fixed cost has paralysed the manpower export sector.
Perhaps manpower export is the worst victim of wrong perceptions. While everybody, from arm-chair intellectuals to policy makers, is gloating over robust growth of remittance, even in recession, they seem to forget that migration is the mother of remittance. God forbid, if the figure of returning migrants overtake number of fresh out-bound migrants, this complacence will evaporate.
Such a scenario is not unlikely, as the tenures of a huge number of our job migrants, especially in Malaysia, are ending in the near future. Once this avalanche starts happening, there will hardly be anything left to do. While still honeymooning with remittance, the policy makers' primary concern should be streamlining manpower export.
Believe it or not, some policy makers do not consider services as exportable, perhaps because they are not tangible and do not occupy space in shipping containers. In a recent meeting of policymakers, a top government functionary commented that since remittance sent by the expatriates was being paid to their relatives, the gain is theirs. If such is the perception of our top officials, then we have a problem!
This is not the space to educate on how the remittance benefits the country. Bangladesh Bank knows it all as it is paying the bills for imports even after paying in full to the receivers of the remittance. It is no surprise that policy makers rate RMG as the top export earner because their product is tangible, while remittance by expatriates is not. Such a peculiar belief is fuelled by the media management of BGMEA, while the inept BAIRA lagged behind. Though BAIRA contributes three times more in net foreign exchange earnings and three times more in employment generation for the country, BGMEA is the "blue-eyed-boy."
The government's belief that fixing of migration cost is a panacea to all ills associated with manpower export may prove counter-productive. Many years back, the government fixed Tk. 50,000 as migration cost, then Tk.84,000 and now Tk.39,000. Such exercises did not have the desired effect in the market. Moreover, this has dampened the trade, distanced it from government, and forced the agents to unholy means to circumvent the condition. This is not a logical scenario.
Like every other economic activity, migration cost is result of interaction of variables, both domestic and international. The challenge is to identify such variables, take the private sector along, and design strategies to control or contain the variables.
Unless the manpower export sector is addressed with the right perceptions, its image uplifted, its stigma removed, and the variables affecting migration cost are controlled, we may be forcing the Golden Goose to sink, and the resultant economic fallout can be devastating.
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