The International Labour Organisation in a report mentioned with appreciation the contribution of the readymade garment sector to the country’s recent robust economic growth. The RMG, which suffered a big jolt from a building collapse in 2013, already made significant headway with support from the ILO and other development organisations and global retailers. The apparel sector maintained its top position among the leading export sectors with 5.0 per cent growth and over $22 billion earnings during January-November period in 2014, according to Export Promotion Bureau. The ILO, in its report titled ‘World Employment and Social Outlook – Trends 2015’, released in Geneva, Switzerland on Tuesday, said Bangladesh had been able to maintain robust economic growth rates in recent years due to strong growth in exports driven by the garment industry. The report also attributed the growth to the remittance from overseas workers saying that Bangladesh economy had grown around 6.0 per cent for an extended period due to strong domestic demand fuelled by the remittance inflows. As of December 26, 2014 Bangladeshi people living overseas sent home $14.71 billion, which was 11.27 per cent higher on year-on-year basis. Besides the economic growth, the ILO report said that Bangladesh and many countries in the region reduced the extent of extreme poverty with effective antipoverty focus adopted in national development plans. The main focus of the latest ILO report, however, is the global job situation, which the ILO apprehends would be more critical in the coming years as unemployment would continue to rise. ‘By 2019, more than 212 million people will be out of work, up from the current 201 million,’ the report said. It said more than 61 million jobs have been lost since the start of the global crisis in 2008 and our projections show that unemployment would continue to rise until the end of the decade. According to the report, two regions, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, accounted for three quarters of the world’s vulnerable employment. East Asia is among the regions that are likely to make the biggest dent in vulnerable employment, which is expected to be reduced in the region from 50.2 per cent in 2007 to 38.9 per cent in 2019. It said the employment situation had improved in the United States and Japan, but remained difficult in a number of advanced economies, particularly in Europe. The ILO report said the steep decline in oil and gas prices, if sustained, may improve the employment outlook somewhat in many advanced economies and several Asian countries according to some forecasts. By contrast, it will hit labour markets hard in major oil and gas producing countries, notably in Latin America, Africa and the Arab region.
