Economic development is always accompanied by an improvement in the quantity and quality of production.
A developing society gradually learns how to make the best use of its potentials and do away with low efficiency (a feature of a traditional society before development starts). An increase in production, income and eventually well-being will materialize when all components of production, including human labor, capital and natural resources, are employed in a better and sensible way to increase output, Nasser Zakeri, an economist, wrote for the Persian daily Shargh. A translation of the article follows:
A country undergoing development should employ all available components of production as well as those of other societies to achieve its goals. Developing countries often have a breathtaking competition when it comes to attracting foreign investment and the elite forces of other societies; each country tries to attract the crème de la crème of immigrant workforce.
From this perspective, the migration of skilled workers amounts to a great loss for the national economy because it not only deprives a part of an economy’s production components, but also it puts the rivals in an advantageous position, giving them the upperhand for growth and prosperity.
Over the past decades, the Iranian economy has suffered seriously from human capital flight. Some economic players have taken out their capital and settled in other countries, while the elite and the learned of our country also showed a strong willingness to move to other countries. The unemployment of specialized workers, stagnation and lack of attractive investment opportunities have set the scene for the immigration of economic players.
There are different opinions regarding human capital flight; official institutions only accept part of the statistics and claim figures on this issue have been inflated. However, one can feel the gravity of the problem just by taking a brief look inside.
A senior official with the Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research believes that the immigration of skilled workers is an old issue, as “we are now seeing the migration of knowledge-based companies,” he said. If we accept this unfortunate and easily verifiable claim, we have to agree that the move toward development will become difficult and a solution should be worked out as soon as possible.
The immigration of elites is a great loss for the country but it pales in comparison to the migration of a knowledge-based company. The immigration of an individual can be seen as a person being dissatisfied with his job and future opportunities, and immigrates to another country in search of a better job opportunity.
However, what you interpret from the migration of a knowledge-based company is that a group of experts, who were willing to serve the national economy and improve production and worked for a long time to achieve their goals, have failed to establish a decent position in the economy and now they are forced to relocate their business to another country. Such a form of migration implies that rent-based relations in our economy have rendered the competition unbearable for the elites; they can’t be hopeful about their future even with the support of the official institutions and sooner or later, they have to pack up and leave.
Our economy is losing its human and financial capital while our regional competitors are using this valuable opportunity, moving them to their own countries.
Many Iran-loving experts are wondering what has led to the rapid economic growth of the southern coast of the Persian Gulf. How can the UAE generate wealth from each square meter of land in the Jebel Ali Free Zone compared with Iranian free zones? And how are we nonchalantly seeing off our human and financial capital boarding the neighboring countries’ speedboat to help boost their economic growth?
