The number of elderly and dependent people in Bangladesh is still low, but like other countries in the world, the number of elderly and dependent people will increase in this country. The rate of elderly and dependent people in the country will more than double in 2050 compared to 2023. Therefore, increasing people’s income is necessary to support a large number of people.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) has stated this information in a report published on Tuesday, Bangladesh needs to increase productivity to become a high-income country. The ILO believes that if Bangladesh can increase productivity by 4.1 percentage points, it can become a high-income country by 2050. Bangladesh is in a better position than India in this regard.

The ILO has provided this information in the report titled Employment and Social Forecast 2024 in the Asia-Pacific Region.

According to the report, the aging population is growing in the Asia-Pacific region. It is estimated that by 2050, the region’s population aged 65 and over will double the current figure. Due to this change the number of dependent people will increase to a large extent. As a result, it can become a major challenge in the path of sustainable economic growth. The impact will be felt the most in East Asia, where the growth rate of the region may decrease by 0.3 percentage points per year. Apart from this, it has been said in the context of South Asia, the benefit of demography will be reduced to a large extent in this region.

demographic benefits; In other words, the ILO believes that the growth of per capita income in the South Asian region is possible despite the decrease in the number of young people. They believe that it will be possible if the thrust of productivity growth continues.

Labor productivity in developing countries in Asia and the Pacific is in some cases less than one-third that of high-income countries. The ILO says this data shows how much income can be raised through increased efficiency. In order to achieve this result, some structural barriers need to be removed as well as training opportunities. As the national production will increase, a large number of workers, who want to earn more, will get that opportunity.

Chihoko Asada-Miyakawa, ILO Assistant Director-General and Director of the Asia Pacific Region, said that the population of the Asia-Pacific region is getting older, but that does not mean that there are no workers in the region. Training should be arranged for those who are looking for decorative jobs. At the same time opportunities should be created so that they can use their abilities.

According to the report, only three countries in the Asia-Pacific region will achieve the status of high-income countries by 2050. Those countries are China, Malaysia and Vietnam. It has been said that China and Malaysia’s labor productivity is now higher than it needs to be, so they will not need to increase their productivity to become high income countries. But Vietnam is not so smooth. To become a high-income country, they need to increase their productivity at a rate of 4.5 percentage points annually.

The report also states that seven more countries need to increase their annual labor productivity by less than 2 percentage points if they are to become high-income countries by 2050. In addition, more than half of the countries in the Asia-Pacific region need to increase their productivity by 2 percentage points every year. For many countries it will increase by more than 6 percentage points. However, this rate is very high. Because even China could not increase productivity at this rate in the last decade.

While the Asia-Pacific region has achieved considerable success in poverty reduction, there has been little improvement in the quality of work. It can be seen that in 2023, two out of every three workers in the region will work in the informal sector. In this respect, there has been an improvement of only 0.2 percentage points in the last decade. The number of people engaged in self-employment and family work has stagnated at 42 percent over the past decade. A large proportion of the people engaged in such work are still engaged in menial work; That is, according to the ILO, the Asia-Pacific region lags far behind in ensuring decent work. Inequality in access to employment and income inequality are high. The income of a large number of workers is still very low.

The ILO believes that dialogue between workers, employers and governments is necessary in this situation.