Surprise! Migrant workers from Malaysia remit more home
While Malaysians tend to look down on neighbouring countries because their workers are forced to work abroad and remit money home, few of us realise that, as a percentage of GDP, migrant workers from Malaysia remit more home than those from Indonesia and Thailand.
A friend of mine sent me the following:
Surprise! Remittances of Malaysian migrants back to Malaysia account for 1.6% of GDP, higher than remittances of Indonesian migrants back to Indonesia (1.1% of GDP) and of Thai migrants back to Thailand (1.2% of GDP). The quantum is higher for Indonesia and just marginally higher for Thailand.
Given the attitude of Malaysia and many Malaysians to migrants, it may come as a bit of a shock that migrant remittances to Malaysia account for a higher proportion of our GDP.
The available report does not show the composition of migrants — i.e. where they fall in the class structure. But it is possible that the Malaysian attitude may be a function of the different composition of Malaysian migrants compared to Indonesian, Indian, Bangladeshi, Vietnamese migrants.
See here for details and the whole report. IFAD is the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development.
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Macro economic trends change over a generations or two. The Phillipinos in the 1960’s probably never expected their sons and daughters going out to work overseas in such a large scale. The way Malaysia is going down, and the other economies are going up, we will be surprised in a generation or two.
We may have already seen the start of these changes in trends:
1. It is no longer profitable for the Philippinos and Thais to come to work in Malaysia
2. Indonesian maids’ quality has fallen, as Malaysian US$ wages stagnate and Indonesian wages overseas rise. This is the same as saying we can no longer afford higher-quality, better-trained, Indonesian maids. Better trained Phillipino and Indonesian maids are in Singapore and HK.
3. Malaysian skilled labour is already priced out of the Taiwan market by Thai workers.
4. Malaysian export of accounting professionals is shifting from high-salary Singapore and HK, to lower-wage China,
5. Malaysian trained service personnel (accountants, nurse, personal trainers) are shifting to the Middle East in increasing number,
It is a scary thought for now, but when the NEP is finally abandoned (it will have to be, or the Malaysian economy will fall even harder on corruption and waste), the unemployable young people of our no-thinking local universities - mostly Malay youth - may stream to work in the Middle East, or middle management in Indonesia. But in the end, each of them will grow stronger and more independent from that challenge after a decade or two.