Threatened pillar of the economy

The over $10 billion a year in remittances has been keeping the economy of Bangladesh afloat. This is no overstatement but a fact . Remittance from our overseas workers has been one of the two pillars, the other one being garments export, on which the Bangladesh economy does largely stand today. But the earning from manpower export, is now seen to be threatened. Manpower export from Bangladesh dropped markedly in 2010. The flow of remittance from workers after posting double digit growth for years, has, of late, slowed down, in terms of incremental growth. Needless to say, this is a disquieting development. The Bangladesh economy could receive a severe jolt not in a far-off date but even during 2011 if the downtrend in manpower export and slowed-down rate of growth of remittance receipts as a consequence are not reversed. But that possibility is becoming more and more remote, in view of the serious political troubles, now in the Middle East and North Africa. The concerned functionaries of the government were upbeat until recently about the situation turning better soon rather than later. They also projected about a sustained growth of manpower export. But all these are now fast becoming very much unreal. Manpower exports can not take wings and fly, as wishes do not turn out to be like birds. Our manpower exports to the major importing countries have already fallen astoundingly and drastically. The single largest importer of Bangladeshi manpower is Saudi Arabia (SA), followed by UAE, Oman and Kuwait. But Bangladeshi workers going to such destinations have turned into only trickles since 2009. As of now, such countries have, however, remained largely unaffected by the political crisis in the region. But if political upheaval takes place there, the employment prospects for the overseas workforce in those countries will be blighted. That is the most serious worry at this stage. The current patchwork attempts to send our manpower to new and novel destinations can be no substitutes for getting back the markets in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region. The relevant minister's earlier statement that decreasing manpower demand, in general, in these countries has been the reason for the drop in our manpower export is not tenable. Even India and Nepal have been rapidly and largely increasing their manpower export to the major manpower-importing Arab countries when the latter have been showing their reluctance to recruit new manpower from Bangladesh. There must have been some wrong somewhere with us or the quality of manpower of the nearby countries must be better than ours. Thus, it needs identification what factors have caused the decline in our manpower export, before trying to address them properly under the present difficult circumstances. Himel Chowdhury Shantibag, Dhaka