GCC nations main destination for overseas Bangladeshis

FE Report Bangladesh has been competing with India and Pakistan in manpower exports across the world especially in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), traders said on Wednesday. They said the GCC countries in the Middle East were the main job market for the overseas Bangladeshis. So far some 4.0 million Bangladeshis had been employed in the region. The GCC is a political and economic union of the Arab states bordering the Persian Gulf and constituting the Arabian Peninsula, namely Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. Jordan and Morocco have been invited to join the council. "Our main competitors are India and Pakistan in the GCC countries and also in other job markets across the globe," Abul Bashar, president of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) told the FE. Nepal has also been emerging as a new competitor and its pace of exports has surpassed that of Bangladesh in the last few months, Bashar added. The GCC countries are among the top oil-rich nations of the Middle East, which regularly need skilled and semi-skilled foreign workers, he said. But lack of skill and technical know-how often disqualify the Bangladeshis for the jobs and for the same reason most of some 7.0 million Bangladeshi expatriate workers are engaged in hard and low-paid jobs across the world. According to experts some 3.0 million people need job in Bangladesh every year, but most of them remain jobless as the rate of unemployment remains still a high level. According to Index Mundi, the unemployment rate in Bangladesh was 5.1 per cent in 2010 and about 40 per cent of the country's 160 million population is underemployed. "If they were skilled or at least semi-skilled, we could have helped them get jobs abroad," Bashar said. Meanwhile, according to the latest World Bank (WB) estimate, remittances from the GCC countries to Bangladesh rose by 8.0 per cent to $12 billion from January to September in the current calendar year on a year-on-year basis. The estimate by the global bank, released last week, said with this earning Bangladesh was placed in the six position among top 10 recipients of remittances earnings among the developing and the least developed countries from the GCC.The remittance receipts from the GCC countries to Pakistan, however, rose some 31 per cent to $12 billion to surpass Bangladesh by a fraction and it secured the fifth position during the period. The portion of remittance earnings from the GCC countries is nearly 60 per cent of the overall remittances earned individually by both Bangladesh and Pakistan, the WB said. However India, the South Asian giant, has also proved itself as being dominant in the overseas job market by capturing the top position, with its aggregate remittance receipts from the region being $58 billion during the same period. India was followed by China with $57 billion, Mexico, $24 billion and the Philippines, $23 billion from the GCC countries in the first nine months of 2011, the WB estimates said. Nigeria followed Bangladesh with $11 billion, Vietnam $9.0 billion and Egypt and Lebanon $8.0 billion each. The overall remittance earnings in FY 2011 rose to $11.6 billion, 6.0 per cent higher than the amount received in the previous year, said a data of Bangladesh Bank, which also fixed a target of such inflow for the current financial year (FY) 2012 at $12.70 billion. The authorities concerned have expressed their optimism of reaching the target as the overall remittances including from the Middle East, consisting of the GCC countries, crossed $4.0 billion in the first four months of the current FY, up 12.05 per cent from the same period in the previous FY. These top 10 recipients have already earned $222 billion in remittance receipts in the first nine months of the year against an estimated flow of such earnings from GCC region to developing and least developed countries at $351 billion in 2011, up 8.0 per cent over 2010, the WB said. Worldwide remittance flows, including those to high-income countries, reached $406 billion in the January- September period this year and the global remittance flows are expected to rise to $515 billion annually by 2014, the WB estimate said.