Japan’s population dramatically shirinking. Photo: Collected-
Bangladesh eyes Japan as a new labour export destination
Md Mizanur Rahman Himadri-
Bangladesh should develop mid- and long- term strategies to tap Japanese labour market as the Asian economic power requires increased workers with the latest statistics show a downward trend in the population growth, said economists, Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) leaders and top policy makers.
According to Xinhua, Japan’s total population shrank by 0.43 percent or about 538,000 in 2022, official estimates showed, amid the government’s pledge to address the demographic challenge.
According to provisional figures released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the country’s total population stood at 124.77 million as of Jan. 1, compared with 125.31 million on the same day in 2022.
The rate of decrease eased slightly from 2021, when the population dropped 0.6 percent.
In the latest count, people aged 65 or over totaled about 36.21 million, accounting for 29 percent, while the ratio of those under the age of 15 came to 14.45 million, making up for 11.6 percent of the population.
With a declining birthrate and an aging population, a shrinking workforce and a greater financial burden on the medical and social security systems are posing challenges to the country.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is set to pledge to secure funds for policies to combat Japan’s declining birthrate in his speech at the opening of a regular parliamentary session next week.
In a new year’s news conference earlier this month, Kishida promised to focus on policies related to children this year, vowing to tackle the low birthrate through “unprecedented” steps. ■
Meanwhile, Bangladesh has exported a total of 2,740 workers to Japan (just 0.02% of its total labour exports) during 1999-2022 period as the country sent a total of 508 workers to the G-7 country, the highest the number in one calendar year. Bangladesh exported only three workers in 2021, 142 workers in 2020, 229 workers in 2019, 163 workers in 2018, 145 workers in 2017, 165 workers in 2016, 95 workers in 2015, 55 workers in 2014, 41 workers in 2013 and 420 workers in 2012, according to the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET).
A top BAIRA leader while talking to this correspondent said that Bangladesh government should devise mid and long- term strategies to tap labour markets in Japan and China as both countries have witnessed negative growth last calendar year…..
Quoting Reuters, he said that the government of Japan upgraded recently its forecast for Japan’s economic growth in fiscal 2023 to a real 1.5 percent, projecting consumer spending will rise on higher pay packets.
The Japanese cabinet approved the projected expansion in inflation-adjusted gross domestic product, which is up from a forecast of 1.1 percent made in July. Fiscal 2023’s overall GDP is expected to reach 558 trillion yen ($4.23 trillion), exceeding the record 554 trillion yen for fiscal 2018.
Nominal GDP is also projected to rise 2.1 percent from the previous fiscal year to reach a new high of 571 trillion yen.
Private consumption, which accounts for more than half of the economy, is expected to rise 2.2 percent in fiscal 2023 on the back of wage rises.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has repeatedly called on firms to increase pay in line with surging inflation as part of his goal to achieve growth and wealth distribution through his “new form of capitalism.”
Meanwhile, Mir Khairul Alam, additional director general of BMET, said that some 3,000 Bangladeshis have been trained in Japanese with requisite technical training.
The government is eyeing higher training of labour to cater to industrialized markets, he also said
“To tap the Japanese labour market, some 30 technical training centres [TTCs] across the country under the BMET are offering necessary training and a six-month course in Japanese language and culture,” said Engr Md Salah Uddin, director of training operation at the BMET.
Bangladesh is eyeing to tap the Japanese labour market by next year, and in this regard, has already begun grooming a good number of Bangladeshi youths with the necessary skills, he also said.
However, a leading labour exporter of the country was not as optimistic, saying instead that the training and teaching methods need improvement and the duration of courses should be extended up to a year.
The government is now conducting six-month-long training sessions on spoken Japanese language at 30 TTCs.
Engr Md Lutfor Rahman, principal of the Bangladesh-Korea TTC at Darussalam, Mirpur, said trained teachers are conducting the courses.
The courses started back in 2017. The duration of the course is six months. Every batch has 70 students and the course fee is only Tk1,000, he said.
In a significant shift for a country long closed to immigrants, Japan was looking to allow foreigners in certain blue-collar jobs to stay indefinitely, starting as early as 2022, an official from the Ministry of Justice said last year.
Under a law that took effect in 2019, a category of “specified skilled workers” in 14 sectors, such as farming, construction, and sanitation have been allowed to stay for up to five years, but without their family members.
The government had been looking to ease those restrictions, which had been cited by companies as among the reasons that they were hesitant to hire such help.
Immigration has long been a taboo in Japan as many prize ethnic homogeneity. But pressure has mounted to open up its borders due to an acute labour shortage given its dwindling and aging population.
As the shrinking population becomes a more serious problem and if Japan wants to be seen as a good option for overseas workers, it needs to communicate that it has the proper structure in place to welcome them, Toshihiro Menju, managing director of think-tank Japan Centre for International Exchange, told Reuters.
The 2019 law was meant to attract some 345,000 “specified skilled workers” over five years, but the intake hovered at about 3,000 per month before the Covid-19 pandemic sealed the borders, according to government data.
As of late 2020, Japan hosted 1.72 million foreign workers out of a total population of 125.8 million, about 2.5% of its working population.
Meanwhile, Tokyo on August 27, 2019 signed a memorandum of cooperation (MoC) with Dhaka to recruit skilled Bangladeshi workers.
Under the MoC, Japan would recruit skilled workers for its 14 sectors including care-giving, building cleaning management, machine-parts industries, electronics, construction, shipbuilding, automobile and agriculture.
Speaking to this correspondent recently, former Japanese Ambassador in Dhaka Ito Naoki said that Japan had a shortage of workers in some industries due to the declining birthrate and aging population, and the Japanese government believed that securing sufficient human resources is necessary for future industrial growth.
Japan had revised the law and set up a new framework to accept foreign citizens equipped with a certain level of work expertise and skills. The new framework, “Specified Skilled Worker” aimed to ensure foreign workers a legal status and good working and living conditions, he added.
