The New Nation - Internet Edition

Agencies

The global economic crisis is putting a dent in funds sent to poor South Asian countries by nationals working abroad amid fears their armies of cheap workers will become redundant, say recruitment agents. Millions of families in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka rely on remittances from relatives working in construction or as domestic servants in booming southeast Asian and Gulf nations. Unskilled workers can often save in a month what they could in a year back home, helping prop up shaky balance of payments in their domestic economies.

But recruiters say this is now under threat after oil prices fell to a near two- year low of 61 dollars per barrel and as the worst global financial turmoil since the 1930s grips the developed world.

"The honeymoon seems to be over for us," said Golam Mostafa, president of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies.

"Oil prices have tumbled which will sharply slow down demand for our workers in the Gulf's booming construction industry in coming months. Other jobs will also take a hit." Bangladesh sent a record 832,000 people abroad in 2007, many of whom landed jobs in oil-rich Gulf countries after sky- rocketing crude prices led to a construction boom in the Middle East.

Singapore and Malaysia also took in many Bangladeshi workers as they experienced strong economic growth. In the past fiscal year, migrant workers pumped eight billion dollars into the Bangladeshi economy, accounting for 12 percent of its gross domestic product.

"Prospects in Malaysia and Singapore look bleak. Export- oriented industries, which employ hundreds of thousands of our workers, have been hit hard by recession fears in the US and Europe," Mostafa said.

Bangladesh started sending workers abroad in the 1970s, but a boost came in 2007 when spiralling oil prices dramatically increased demand for cheap labour in the Middle East.

Official figures show five million Bangladeshis are temporarily working abroad, but the number is estimated to be nine million if illegal workers are included.

At home, some 40 percent of its 144 million people still live in poverty, but studies by the World Bank show that number has been dropping by nearly two percent a year thanks largely to the flow of remittances into rural areas.

"Remittance is the lifeblood of Bangladesh's economy. It has changed the country, with districts that have sent more people abroad now far richer than others," said Mosharraf Hossain, an MP-turned-recruitment agent.

In neighbouring Nepal, 2.2 million overseas workers contribute about one billion dollars a year to the economy, according to the Department of Labour, which says the economic crisis has already hit its remittances inflow.

"Our preliminary reports say that there has been a drop of

between five to 10 percent in the numbers going abroad in

September and October," department spokesman Shsyam Khatri Chetri said.

"We are anticipating a further fall in the numbers leaving." In the capital Kathmandu, recruiter Binod Karki has been sending around 100 workers to Malaysia every month for the past five years, but cutbacks have started to bite.

"Since the crash, demand for factory workers has completely dried up," said Karki.

In Sri Lanka, overseas workers sent home 1.97 billion dollars from January to August this year, 23 percent up on the same period last year.

Central Bank governor Nivard Cabraal said the crisis was yet to affect Sri Lanka's remittances and he was hopeful Gulf economies would be shielded from problems in the US and Europe.

In Bangladesh, the World Bank's senior economist Zahid Hussein was also hopeful remittances to poor nations would weather the current economic storm.

"We're monitoring the situation closely," he said, adding that remittances remained fairly robust during economic downturns in 2001 and the early 1990s.

"If this recession is as bad and as deep as people are saying then I would expect the strong growth in remittances seen in the last few years to slow."