12.05.2011, Jeddah, Experts from the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) member countries as well as regional and international organizations including the International Monetary Fund, the International Labor Office and the Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Center for Islamic Countries (SESRIC), participated in a two day Expert Group Meeting (EGM) in IDB headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to diagnose the unemployment crisis in the post-crisis world, address the challenges, bridge the gaps at the national and regional levels and find solutions to tackle the employment issues in IDB member countries.
Chaired by IDB Vice-President Ahmed Tiktik, the EGM underlined that the recession that followed the global financial and economic crisis has exacerbated employment insecurity in the world and lack of productive jobs is currently an issue in many IDB member countries, citing the dire need to resort to employment-tailored approaches across multiple sectors and develop interventions with critical impact at community level.
Poor infrastructure, low labor productivity, mismatch of skills and labor market requirements, low quality education and training, lack of long term strategies for creating job opportunities, data and methodology inadequacies, high operating costs, non-conformity of conventional microfinance loans to Islamic principles, under-investment in female education and vocational training specially by the private sector as well as benchmarking and mutual learning were amongst the challenges and constraints to creating thriving employment opportunities in IDB member countries touched upon by the EGM.
The meeting wrapped up work on May 10th, 2011, presenting a number of recommendations at national, regional and IDB levels to overcome the existing constraints. The recommendations urged for greater labor flexibility, upgrading higher education quality, expansion and diversification of micro-finance, and establishing workable cooperation mechanisms under the COMCEC to follow up OIC decisions on employment, labor mobility and capacity enhancement.
Developing key infrastructure, boosting cross-border communication and transport links, minimizing regulatory obstacles to investments and providing productive regional infrastructure to foster movement of economic resources also featured on the list of the EGM’s recommendations. For the IDB Group, the experts put forth several recommendations including strengthening the preparation of Country Poverty Assessment (CPA), and Member Country Partnership Strategy (MCPS).