State Minister for Finance and Planning MA Mannan said on Saturday that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is likely to hire more Bangladeshi manpower soon.
The minister said, "They've (UAE) assured us that recruitment of more manpower from Bangladesh is under consideration.”
“I think if UAE recruits Bangladeshi workers more in the coming days, it would be beneficial for both the countries," he said.
Although there was sluggish trend in manpower export to the gulf nation over the last couple of years, the UAE is likely to recruit more manpower from Bangladesh soon, reports BSS.
Returning from the two-day meeting in Abu Dhabi, the minister said UAE authorities also feel reluctant to some extent to provide visas to the Bangladeshi workers.
The 4th Bangladesh-UAE Joint Commission meeting was held on February 5-6, after a gap of long eight years.
Mannan led the Bangladeshi side while UAE State Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Anwar Gargash led the UAE side in the joint commission meeting.
Bangladesh government has worked a lot to enhance the skills of the workers who are now more capable to contribute to the growth and development of the UAE, he said in the meeting.
Awami League government has been going ahead with the operations of machine-readable passports while electronic visas are also in the offing, the delegation informed to the UAE.
Bangladesh pointed out various difficulties being faced by its nationals in getting visas to visit UAE, including visit visas and work visas, the Economic Relations Division (ERD) official said.
The ERD officials said the UAE side informed that they will coordinate with the relevant authorities of the UAE to study the issue and discuss the matter with the Bangladesh," added the official.
Bangladesh handed over UAE delegation three specimens of machine-readable passport booklets (diplomatic, official and ordinary) which are being used by Bangladesh citizens, the ERD officials added.
The inward remittance from the UAE in FY14 was $2,684.86 million which rose to $2,823.77 million in FY15, according to the Bangladesh Bank.
The inflow of remittance from the UAE, however, dropped to $2,711.74 million in FY16 and $2,093.54 million in FY17 while the six-month figure in the current fiscal year totaled $1,138.36 million.
The data of the Bureau of Manpower and Training (BMET) showed that the highest number of 2,82,739 Bangladeshi workers went to the UAE in 2011 followed by 2,15,452 workers in 2012.
But, after that the outbound flow of Bangladeshi workers to the UAE witnessed a drastically fall as some 14,241 Bangladeshi workers went to the UAE in 2013 followed by 24,232 workers in 2014, some 25,271 workers in 2015, some 8,131 workers in 2016 and some 4,135 workers in 2017.
