Limited exchange of skills among developing countries

The skill-importing developing countries can have the access to skilled manpower on substantially better terms than those offered to the equally skilled personnel from developed countries; access to skill experience more relevant to the economic and cultural basis of their societies; greater choice in the selection of skills and sources; and more, importantly, an assured supply of a variety of skilled people required for the implementation of their industrial programmes. The main reason for the non-realization is the characteristics of the present market context in which the exchange takes place. Information regarding the demand for various skills between developing countries and its diffusion to the job-seekers, recruiting agents and employers are lacking. There is also a lack of linkages of the migration system with the decision-making units in the education and training sectors on the other hand, and with the decision-making process in development planning on the other. The sending countries face such problems as the social cost of "replacement migrants"; occupational immobility and segmentation of the labour market in response to unplanned outflows; imperfect substitution for skilled manpower emigrating in certain sectors; fluctuations in the emigrants' remittances and shortages of specific skills debilitating the over-all economic development. The competition between skill-exporting countries in recruiting specific skills, as well as skill-supplying countries for access to the same markets have reinforced the inefficiency of the market mechanism for the exchange of skills among developing countries.