Data of last three years showed the job creation in private sector has slowed
The number of jobs created by Bangladesh’s private sector has been shrinking for last several years, underlining low investment and slow economic growth.
Data of last three years showed the job creation in private sector has slowed.
Although this is the situation, Finance Minister AMA Muhith has given no clear outline in the next fiscal’s proposed budget to revitalise employment creation in the country.
According to Board of Investment data, the private sector employed 5.03 lakh new comers in FY2010-11, 4.51 lakh in FY2011-12 and 3.09 lakh in FY2012-13.
The first seven months data of the current fiscal is also gloomy as during the period only 1.27 lakh new jobs were provided by the sector.
Analysts expect the creation of employment coping with the demand will remain a challenge in the upcoming fiscal too as chances are gloomy over the removal of infrastructural bottlenecks and improving political situation.
“We cannot be optimistic about job creation given political situation and low investment,” said Zaid Bakht, research director of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS).
These factors (politics and investment) also caused a decline in imports that resulted in the fall of service sector jobs including financial institutions, wholesale and retailing, Zaid Bakht said.
In his budget speech, finance minister, however, set some targets to generate skilled manpower for the job markets – both local and overseas.
The government will expect to produce a total of 2.6 lakh skilled people for the local market in the next three years with assistance from development partners. It will also generate 10 lakh skilled people for overseas market in the next 15 years, Muhith said.
For local market, the government has identified five growing sectors – garment industry, construction, information technology, light engineering and ship building for employment opportunities.
According to the data, a total of 75% of employments are supplied by the country’s private sector.
Analysts say the employment situation will not improve unless private sector investment is increased.
BoI data showed the total private sector investment was Tk1,72,051 crore in FY2009-10, which increased to Tk2,88,911 crore in the current fiscal year, not a significant growth at all.
The total investment in FY2012-13 was about Tk2,60,749 crore.
As per Bangladesh Bank records, the private investment went down 21.3% this year compared to the previous year.
Private sector credit growth slumped to 11.46% in April this year which was the lowest in the last 10 years. It’s also significantly lower than the target of 16.5% set in the present monetary policy.
Domestic savings also stagnated, plunging to the lowest level in 10 years.
Around 18 lakh job seekers enter the job market every year. Of them, nearly six lakh find jobs overseas. A part of the rest is absorbed by the local market, while others remain unemployed.
The number of those absorbed in the local job market depends on economic activities driven by credit growth to the private sector, and investment. The outlook of the overseas job market is also not encouraging.
On an average, six lakh Bangladeshis migrate abroad for jobs annually, but in the first four months this year, a total of 139,907 workers migrated to different countries. Trends show that the number would be slightly more than four lakh next year.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
