‘No job growth in RMG sector’

The country’s recent economic growth has failed to accelerate growth in creating new jobs, an economist has observed.

In a Prothom Alo OpEd piece, Rezwanul Islam has noted that the job growth in proportion to gross domestic product (GDP) growth decreased to less than a half in a decade.

Between 2005 and 2010, a one per cent GDP growth contributed to job increase by 0.55 per cent while the job growth rate for one per cent GDP growth came down to 0.25 per cent in the years between 2010 and 2017, the economist analysed.

The Bangladesh economy saw one per cent higher growth almost every decade since 1990s that has stood at more than 7 per cent of late.

“Many people now acknowledge that despite higher economic growth, the challenges of job creation remains,” noted Rezwanul Islam in his piece “We want jobs, decent jobs” published on Monday.

He further pointed out that during the 2005-2010 period, the country’s industrial sector witnessed a hob growth of 350,000 a year. However, he added, the job growth during 2015-16 and 2016-17 yeas decelerated to 200,000.

“This means, the economy has lost its steam in creating jobs in proportion to GDP growth. Now the question is whether we will be able to reverse the trend in future in view of mechanisation of different sectors,” the economist said.

He expressed his views that no progressive government does not depend on a policy of giving focus on only one sector for creating jobs in exchange for assistance as inventive.

The economist cited the example of the export-earning readymade garments (RMG) sector which too showed stagnation in job creation. “It’s not understandable why incentives to a sector which has not created additional jobs, would be provided with incentives,” he said adding that no potential sector was given incentive to create more and better jobs.

“The government can take the responsibility of creating jobs and it can create thousands of jobs through programmes… But it’s not possible for the government to create millions of jobs,” Rezwanul Islam wrote.

In this context, he recommended that the government should prepare in its first 100 days an overall strategic plan for creating jobs.

* This analytical report has been prepared by Khawaza Main Uddin, based on the aforemenhtioned article published in Prothom Alo print edition