FROM PAGE B1

“These discrepancies in standards and definitions have enabled the BBS to report an inflated employment rate for years, thereby downplaying the extent of the unemployment issue in the country,” the paper said.

According to the paper, the reliance on outdated standards distorts the actual representation of labour and employment conditions, affecting several key indicators, including the labour force participation rate, employment rate, unemployment rate, youth unemployment, youth not in employment, education, or training (NEET) and informal employment.

“Some countries still use the 13th ICLS, but most of those countries do not have a population size like Bangladesh,” said Tuomo Poutiainen, ILO country director for Bangladesh.

“Because Bangladesh’ population size affects regional and sub-regional numbers and averages,” he told The Daily Star.

The ILO country director said the International Labour Organization encourages the use of the 19th ICLS and is already providing technical support to the BBS to adopt it.

Not only the 19th, but the latest ICLS, the 21st, held in Geneva in 2023, focused on informal sector and informal economy data, he added.

“We encourage the BBS to also start adopting some of those relevant definitions,” he said.

IGNORING THE UPDATE MAY LEAD TO WRONG POLICIES

Admitting the use of old data in labour force surveys, the statistics bureau said it needs time to adopt new standards.

However, experts called for the agency to shift to new standards as soon as possible.

Sayema Haque Bidisha, a professor of economics at the University of Dhaka, said the BBS should adopt the updated definition to portray the real picture. “If we ignore the updated definition, it will lead to wrong policymaking decisions.”

Bidisha, also pro-vice-chancellor of Dhaka University, suggested the BBS calculate backdated data using updated definition to avoid providing misleading information.

Echoing similar sentiments, Rizwanul Islam, a former special adviser for employment at the ILO in Geneva, called for the adoption of the updated definition while maintaining data consistency.

The white paper said the 19th ICLS method makes more sense from a policymaking perspective and the BBS should follow it in the future.

Towfiqul Islam Khan, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), said, “BBS labour data is useless in terms of policy making. It doesn’t reflect the real picture of the market.”

He, however, expressed optimism about the BBS’s step to adopt some of the 19th ICLS standards following the publication of the white paper.

“We need elaborate data on previous years, which will guide proper policy-making decisions,” Khan said.

Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, director general of the BBS, said they have already inserted a new chapter in the latest final report of the LFS 2023.

Rahman said, “We have started to move to new standards gradually. It will require some time.”

In reply to a query about whether the outdated definitions were employed as a political favour to the past government, he said: “We had no intention to provide any political benefits to any party. Besides, we had the ILO monitoring our previous labour data publication.”

However, Selim Raihan, executive director of the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling and also a member of the white paper panel, believes there were political pressures on BBS to show positive labour market indicators.

“This might have pressured the bureau to refrain from adopting the latest definitions so that it reflects a positive picture,” he told The Daily Star.