Regulate migrant labour under Madani economy, Jomo says

Prominent economist Prof Jomo Kwame Sundaram today called for the regularisation of migrant labour to recognise the participation of undocumented migrant workers in the country’s labour workforce under the Madani Economy.

He said Malaysia does not include undocumented migrant workers in its per capita income currently.

“One of the features of the Madani Economy, which is interesting, is a commitment to increase the labour share of income.

“Malaysia’s labour share of income is actually very low at 40 percent, and there is a pledge to increase it to 45 percent. This number is arbitrary in my view.

“Increasing the labour share of national income is actually quite important because we have a problem in Malaysia, where we pretend the contribution of undocumented labour is not there,” he said.

He was speaking at a discourse series organised by INCEIF University in Kuala Lumpur today.

Jomo was part of a panel session titled ‘Reviving the Malaysian Economy: Why, How and Who?’

He said migrant labour was estimated at about 6.7 million about a decade ago against an estimated labour force of about 15 million.

Assuming that the documented migrant labour was at 2.2 million, if this 2.2 million is deducted from the 6.7 million, that means there are 4.5 million undocumented migrant workers.

This is “almost one quarter of the country’s labour force, and you pretend that they are not there?” Jomo said.

“So basically, we are really overestimating per capita income, and we are overestimating productivity because we do not have this in the denominator,” he added.

In Oct 2022, former minister of the Prime Minister’s Department (Economy) Mustapa Mohamed said the country’s Statistics Department recorded 2.1 million migrants working in various sectors up to June 2022.

Columbia University’s Richmond Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy senior fellow Aamir A Rehman was also at the session.

- Bernama