WITH more countries expected to age, the World Bank sees the demand for migrants rising as aging countries would require migrants to boost their economies.
In the World Development Report 2023, the World Bank said this is a unique opportunity to make migration work better for economies and people.
The World Bank said the share of working-age adults will drop sharply in many countries. Apart from demographics, climate change is also expected to fuel the increase in the number of migrants.
“Migration can be a powerful force for prosperity and development,” said World Bank Senior Managing Director Axel van Trotsenburg. “When it is managed properly, it provides benefits for all people—in origin and destination societies.”
The World Bank said countries like Spain, with a population of 47 million, is projected to shrink by more than one third by 2100, with those above age 65 increasing to 39 percent from 20 percent of the population.
Further, countries like Mexico, Thailand, Tunisia and Türkiye may also need more foreign workers because their population is no longer growing.
Climate change, the World Bank said, has led to the tripling of the number of refugees over the last decade. Moreover, about 40 percent of the world’s population—3.5 billion people—live in places highly exposed to climate impacts.
“This World Development Report proposes a simple but powerful framework to aid the making of migration and refugee policy,” said Indermit Gill, Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. “It tells us when such policies can be made unilaterally by destination countries, when they are better made plurilateral by destination, transit and origin countries, and when they must be considered a multilateral responsibility.”
In the report, the Philippines was made an example of the benefits of migration. The country has been exporting workers since the 1970s and has developed systems that facilitate migration from pre-deployment to eventual return and reintegration.
The World Bank cited the work of Ateneo de Manila University Department of Economics Chairperson Alvin Ang and Deputy Director of the Global Human Development (GHD) Program at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, Erwin R. Tiongson.
Based on the paper, the authors said the Philippines entered into 54 bilateral labor agreements (BLAs) to provide better conditions for emigrants. These BLAs, particularly those with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations, abolished placement fees to reduce migration costs, among other policies.
The country, the authors said, also prepares migrants prior to deployment. The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) trains more than 800,000 graduates a year and a number of them become Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs).
The government also provides predeparture orientation programs to inform migrants about the risks and benefits of migration and labor rights and safety measures, as well as information specific to the destination.
Apart from these, the government also works through Philippine Overseas Labor Offices (POLOs) to protect migrants. The POLOs provide labor protection, training, and general support to migrants.
The government also requires that all OFWs be covered by insurance by way of their employers. However, there are still gaps in the implementation, particularly in light of the pandemic.
Remittance-sending cost
The cost of sending remittance, meanwhile, is already one of the world’s lowest because of the efforts of the government and private sector to create digital platforms for remittance services.
“Despite the significant development impacts of remittances, gaps remain, particularly for children whose parent or caregiver goes abroad. Households relying on remittances may face uninsured shocks from abroad, such as a pandemic,” the report stated.
The authors also said the government provides support for returning migrants through various reintegration programs. The only caveat is that uptake of these programs has been low at only 4 percent of returnees.
Majority or 70 percent of returning migrants, Ang and Tiongson pointed out, report that they continue to experience difficulties in finding “a satisfactory job” back home.
Still, efforts to expand assistance for returning OFWs may be under way given the latest Philippine Development Plan (PDP).
The 2023 to 2028 PDP focuses on returning migrants’ reentry into the economy, and on the management of social impacts, including through health and psychosocial services to migrants’ children.
Earlier, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported that the growth in remittances from Filipinos abroad slowed to 2.4 percent in February, the slowest in seven months. In July 2022, remittances posted a year-on-year growth of 2.3 percent. In the first two months of the year, cash remittances grew 3 percent.
The level of cash remittances also reached P2.569 billion, the lowest level since May 2022 when remittances amounted to P2.425 billion. In the January to February period, remittances amounted to P5.331 billion.
On a year-to-date basis, cash remittances coursed through banks in January-February 2023 amounted to $5.33 billion, up by 3 percent from $5.18 billion recorded in the same period a year-ago.
The growth in cash remittances from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Qatar contributed mainly to the increase in remittances in January-February 2023.
Meanwhile, in terms of country sources, the US posted the highest share of overall remittances during the period, followed by Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Japan.
Image credits: Nonie Reyes