Our economy is in a critical period at the moment. While the finance advisor to the interim government has stated that the economy is beginning to stabilize and our foreign reserves are also showing positive growth, the prevailing situation with weakened law and order and general instability has all but resulted in vanishing interest when it comes to investment.
On top of these issues, one of the absolute cornerstones of our economy, remittance from our overseas workers, is potentially in jeopardy due to the closures of some of Bangladesh’s key labour markets. According to a recent Dhaka Tribune report, citing the Bureau of Manpower, Employment, and Training (BMET), several major labour markets have been closed to Bangladesh over the past 12 years -- markets such as Oman, Bahrain, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Malaysia, Egypt, Romania, Brunei, and the Maldives.
With such high numbers of potential markets for our labour force being all but closed to them, Bangladeshi workers are currently left scrambling and spending more money to be able to migrate to countries like Saudi Arabia, which have a history of worker safety and even basic human rights being violated.
We have long editorialized that the potential of our labour force remains untapped and that the only way for the sector to keep growing is for the government to keep exploring new potential destinations for our remittance earners. And now the inability to secure new markets could put Bangladesh’s migration industry at significant risk.
According to experts, a stagnation in market research is one of the fundamental reasons behind the lack of growth in this sector -- the last time BMET conducted a study on the potential of labour markets was all the way back in 2018. While the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment has stated that work is underway to reopen closed markets, we cannot expect higher remittances while not doing the needful in order to expand our labour force’s reach by relying on the same markets we have for years.