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A huge number of Bangladeshi workers are currently unemployed or suffering from disguised unemployment. Therefore, it is so important that governments in Bangladesh should realise the supreme importance of addressing the problem of unemployment.
The government can do much to ease the pangs of unemployment by adopting right fiscal and monetary policies that would encourage greater investments in the economy. Generally, it is understood that more the investments, the greater the establishment of various types of enterprises, infrastructures and services to create employment opportunities.
Insufficient investments have been frustrating the creation of new employment opportunities in Bangladesh. The government here needs to identify each of the factors that can contribute to a better investment climate. The same would include improvement of law and order, much lowering the interest rate on borrowings, addition to, and upgradation of, infrastructures, fiscal policies that create level playing fields for local entrepreneurs in relation to foreign competitors, fiscal incentives such as tax reduction and tax exemption, etc.
The government will need to act imaginatively and effectively in relation to each of the above issues and more to improve, overall, the investment climate in the country that, in turn, would accelerate economic activities and make the desired impact on the unemployment situation.
However, there is also a need to be clear about the policies to be pursued to create employment. New enterprises will absorb the unemployed. But capital-intensive enterprises will employ a smaller number than labour intensive ones, which will understandably employ a greater number of workers. Thus, enterprises with labour intensive character should be encouraged.
New enterprises to produce horticultural products for exports can be labour intensive. A natural silk-based industry, depending on production of raw silk in rural areas, can be similarly labour intensive. Small and cottage industries in different sectors can be also labour intensive in nature and directly contribute to creating employment among the preponderant poor population of the country at the grassroots of existence in the rural areas. Thus, more funding and institutional supports for such small and cottage industries should be made available.
The government can make a big contribution toward reducing unemployment by also building and operating a large number of training institutions to train the jobless ones in different vocations for them to be fit enough to take up employment in the country, to go abroad with jobs or to engage in self-employment.
Meshbahuddin Ahmed
Dhaka University
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