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Presently, Bangladesh receives a huge amount of foreign currency from its expatriate workers but the government has no plan to utilise these funds gainfully for the long-term economic development of the country. There have been proposals to draw funds of expatriate workers into industrial bonds to be sold by the government. The same could notably increase the rate of remittances while giving a spur to industrialisation of the country which is lagging due, among others, to insufficiency of funds. But hard measures to this end and other ways to make best possible use of the remitted moneys are yet to be devised and pursued.
Policies are also needed to stop free-style migration of professionals from Bangladesh; their leaving in many cases are leading to worrisome brain drain and costing the country dearly in meaningless spending on them for education and training while other countries get the benefit of their services. Their absence at home creates serious gaps in meeting targets of services delivery.
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The writer is a free-lance contributor to the Financial Express
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