Improving intra-regional labor access in the Asean will take more than the completion of Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs), according to local and international experts.
In a briefing on the sidelines of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (Pid)-Economic Research Institute (Eria) forum on Thursday, experts from the think tanks agreed that efforts to improve certification, when it comes to skills and professions, will ultimately make it easier for workers to get employed in the region. “Don’t bank too much on MRAs,” Eria Senior Economist Ponciano Intal Jr. said. “If you are in a globalized industry, you need terrific certification systems for you to move around the region.”
Intal explained that, if a Filipino is certified in the tourism industry, for example, he or she can already work anywhere in the region. Employers looking for workers in the field that are certified can easily hire these applicants.
But more than MRAs and the certification, Intal said what is important is for the search cost for prospective employers and potential employees to decline. This will eventually allow greater labor movement in the region.
The movement of labor in the region, PIDS President Gilberto Llanto said, is an essential part of economic integration. The problem, he added, is if all the countries in the region will adopt a protectionist stance when it comes to the labor market.
“What could somehow delay that would be adopting a protectionist attitude,” Llanto said. “If we have the same attitude around the table, and we have among Asean countries, then that could really tamper with this building up of the Asean economic community.”
Given the differences in domestic regulations, some professions could not take full advantage of the MRAs. Eria Senior Policy Fellow Rebecca Fatima Sta. Maria said that, while some professions have MRAs, domestic regulations can prevent these MRA-covered workers from actually getting jobs elsewhere in the region.
Sta. Maria said some professions chose to go through industry associations, while others merely rely on foreign direct investments (FDI) to work in other Asean member-countries. She explained that engineers, for example, went through the Asean Federation of Engineering Organisations (AFEO), which works with governments in the region for the movement of skilled labor, specifically engineers.
The organization, Sta. Maria said, has a register of certified engineers and, once they are registered, Asean countries can allow them to practice their profession.
The other way that skilled labor can move around in the region is through the Movement of Natural Persons (MNPs), which are short-term entry and are dependent on companies’ investments in certain countries.
“This is temporary entry. It’s less intimidating; it’s less threatening for the general public in the context. Still it’s a sensitive topic. This takes a lot of work; you have to deal with the sensitivities within the country, within the industry,” Sta. Maria said.
The Asean explained in a May 2016 brief that MRAs allow for a worker’s skills, experience and accreditations to be recognized across the region. This will enable them to work outside their country.
The region currently has MRAs in place for six sectors—engineering, nursing, architecture, medicine, dentistry and tourism. There are also MRA framework agreements for surveying and accountancy.