Mahdi Amin: Controlling commodity prices is a key priority in achieving our macroeconomic objectives. Naturally, individuals across the country should live more prosperously with their families and relatives in socio-economic systems. We need to ensure that basic needs like food, clothing, housing, education and health care are more accessible. Recently the holy month of Ramzan has ended. Despite challenging global and domestic economic conditions, it was possible to control commodity prices better than in previous years. Despite the lack of liquidity, imports of food and essential goods continued, so there was no internal market crisis and inflation remained under control.
Despite oil prices rising globally due to the Middle East war, oil prices in Bangladesh remained relatively stable. Under the instructions of the Prime Minister, alternative sources of oil are being explored, and international negotiations are being given utmost priority. For the first time in almost 18 years, there was no labor unrest during Eid-ul-Fitr. Through coordinated discussions with workers, management and stakeholders and necessary banking support, it was ensured that every employee received their salary, bonus and other benefits before Eid.
prothom hello : :
More than two-thirds of Bangladesh’s population is youth. Considering the demographic dividend, we are far ahead. Every year approximately 20,00,000 youth are entering the labor market. Employment was one of the major demands of the July Movement. What is your government’s plan for youth employment?
Mahdi Amin: We can reap the benefits of the demographic dividend when we empower youth, regardless of gender or demography, and when we can develop them as honest, skilled and capable individuals. The priority of the government is to create synergy between industries and academia and to provide facilities to the private sector. Efforts are underway to integrate vocational education into mainstream education. Efforts are being made to make the next generation of youth efficient in their work. We have a lot of public infrastructure that is not fully functional, and some unused facilities such as various BSCICs, economic zones, EPZs and hi-tech parks, and we plan to connect them locally to generate employment through industry and trade expansion.
The Ministry of Overseas Welfare and Foreigners Welfare was established during the tenure of Khaleda Zia. Only BNP has a tradition of implementing different schemes and welfare initiatives for expatriates. Our aim is to systematically ensure language education for individuals visiting different countries. Additionally, the qualifications or skills they possess must be in line with the workforce demand of the foreign country.
At the national level, we need to significantly increase labor migration. From a country with a huge population like Bangladesh, only about 10,00,000 people go abroad for work annually. Our target is to increase this number to 20,00,000 per year. We want to incorporate essential technical and language training into our education system. Therefore, along with Bengali and English, we prefer to learn a third language, for example, Arabic for the Middle Eastern labor market, and French, Italian or German for Europe. Regional languages like Japanese, Chinese or Korean are essential for Asia.
We want to establish language learning opportunities from Bangladesh for all the countries where we have employment opportunities. Women constitute more than 50 percent of our population, but their number among those going abroad is less than 10 percent. By creating policies that prepare them as skilled workers, women can become an important part of this outgoing workforce. Our nurses, with proper training, and if we promote many as caregivers, can match the demand for foreign jobs. Aligning our education system with job demands and helping embassies match demand and supply will open up many employment opportunities abroad for women.