How could migrant workers contribute to Cambodia’s future economy?

Khmer Times, April 20, 2021 (Link)

With over one million of migrant workers, if one of them send home $100 a month, the annual remittance to Cambodia’s economy would be at least $1.2 billion annually. Remittance is one of the most basic measurements of contribution by Cambodian migrant workers. Labor migration is important in terms of complementing domestic job opportunities.

Remittance can be a good source of consumption by dependents at home. If managed well, it can be a good saving, or even seed money for initial investment when those workers return home.

That said, labor migration is not economically sustainable in the long run for home economy regardless of how abundant the sources of foreign jobs, and how high the level of incomes. At some points, those workers will have to return home as they cannot permanently stay and work at the host countries.

The fact is migratory work does not make people rich nor does it make the country become developed because it does not help strengthen the country’s economic and industrial foundation other than private consumption.

Cambodia cannot become a country of labor exporter forever. As Cambodia’s economy is developing, Cambodia also needs labor force to support its own economy and industry.

So the question that we need to ask is that, when a considerable number of those workers have returned home, how do we integrate them in Cambodian economy? Or to put it in other words, how could migrant workers contribute to Cambodia’s future economy?

Migrant workers are expected to bring back home new ideas and skills thanks to their exposure to developed societies that have strong entrepreneurial culture, and high technical skills, especially in countries like the Republic of Korea and Japan. These two countries have good work ethics and they strongly respect human rights and labor rights.

There can be many ways for migrant workers to contribute to Cambodia’s future economy. Among others, two possible ways as below can be considered.

Firstly, they can contribute through improvement of domestic investment confidence in terms of supply of quality labor force. Korean and Japanese investors often complain that Cambodia lacks higher skilled labor forces, technicians and middle management staff.

Therefore, it is important that investors know that at certain point of time Cambodia does have a larger pool of skilled labors who used to be migrant workers in their own countries. To do so, the clustering of knowledges and resources is important. This can be done through the establishment of association of former migrant workers with specific skills, for example, the association of former migrant workers in South Korea in agriculture, manufacturing factories, or services. At least, investors should know whom should they contact for a large pool of human resources that have already been trained in their own countries and with good understanding of their culture.

If Cambodia has good clustering of such labor forces, we can possibly urge Korean and Japanese investors to outsource those jobs and factories to Cambodia as such options can be much cheaper than having to operate in their home countries, and bringing in labor forces overseas through many administrative arrangements. Equally important, such option is much safer for workers too. For Korean and Japanese companies, they would benefit much from those former migrant workers because they have technical capacity, understand their managerial demands, know the language, and also understand the culture.

As such, to prepare for such clustering, it is important that migrant workers should have a clear career goals, through for example career orientation programs, prior to their departure to make sure that they can address the skill shortages when they return home, and can play pro-active role in contributing to the boosting of investment confidence at home.

Secondly, migrant workers can contribute to economy through the boosting of entrepreneurial culture. South Korea and Japan are good examples of strong entrepreneurial culture and management skills. If migrant workers are ambitious enough, they can learn those skills and can start creating companies of their own when they return.

There are some success stories of former migrant workers who have created successful businesses after they learned from Korean and Japanese experiences. And some tycoons can even give back to society especially during the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Their success stories should be more amplified to encourage more migrant workers to learn from these good examples.

To help boost entrepreneurial culture and ecosystem, some successful migrant workers can possibly consider creating, for example, the Entrepreneur Association of Former Migrant Workers from South Korea or Japan.

If they are wealthy enough, they can possibly create the Entrepreneurship Fund for Former Migrant Workers to support those dreamers who are highly ambitious in creating their own Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Former migrant workers know each other, and thus they can use their connection of trust to decide whether to provide funding for the initial capital investment for those who are believed to be capable of creating and running their own companies or those who have viable and innovative business ideas.

If such ecosystem can be created, migrant workers can contribute not only to sustainability and self-reliance of their own livelihood but also for others who seek jobs from their companies. For Cambodia as a whole, it could benefit from enhanced private sector-driven economy that creates more jobs, and stronger domestic markets and industries.

Either of the above two ways, the main goal is to ensure that the livelihood of migrant workers should become better when they return home, and to create an enabling factor for them to become the integral part of the growing Cambodian middle-class. They are the very people who help build and maintain stronger economy at home with stronger trust and more integrated economy with countries that used to train them such as South Korea and Japan.

We should aim to create healthy economic relations with those countries that provide safe and dignified workspace for our workers, and enhance healthy relations that enable entrepreneurial cultures and support the dream of migrant workers to become the next Cambodian middle-class.

Migrant workers do have dreams, and their dreams are strongly related with Cambodia’s future economy.

Sim Vireak

Strategic Advisor of the Asian Vision Institute (AVI)