Restaurants spring up in past decade
The amount of restaurants and the persons involved in the sector has drastically increased over the decade to 2019-20 because of changing lifestyle, increasing mobility of individuals, and demand for dining-out, according to a fresh survey.
The Hotel and Restaurant Survey 2020 premiered on Sunday, the to begin its kind in 10 years. It found that the number of restaurants rose to 4.36 lakh in 2019-20, reflecting a 59 per cent increase from a decade ago.
The survey, completed by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), however, did not assess the Covid-19 effect on the hotel and restaurants, which were severely damaged by the lockdowns enforced by the government to curb the spread of the condition.
Akhtaruzzaman Khan, president of the Bangladesh Hotel Restaurant Sweets Bakery Workers Union, said around 45 % of the persons engaged in hotels and restaurants lost jobs due to the closure of a large number of restaurants amid the Covid-19.
"People in the sector are actually passing miserable days. They are yet to get any support from the federal government," he said.
The BBS survey finds that hotels and restaurants employed 22.8 lakh persons by 2019-20, up from 9 lakh ten years ago.
The contribution of the sector to the gross domestic product has increased to 0.75 per cent. In terms of value, it had been Tk 87,926 crore in fiscal 2019-20 against Tk 11,986 crore in 2009-10.
"It demonstrates the hotel and restaurant sector expanded rapidly, and the sector is making valuable contributions," said BBS in the report.
Together with the growth of the sector, employment cost per person nearly doubled to Tk 69,048 annually in 2019-20. Employment cost includes salary, wages and cash and non-cash benefits.
The state agency completed the survey by collecting data from 6,734 hotels and restaurants during March-April 2020.
Selim Raihan, executive director of the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling, said the quantity of hotels and restaurant had increased sufficiently as the lifestyle of folks and their food habit had changed, and the demand for food items had increased in this decade.
"Nowadays, people buy food online," he said.
About the increased number of women workers in the sector, Prof Raihan said if the BBS report have been correct, the sector could have been just behind the garment industry when it comes to female workers employed.
"But there's not been that much occurrence of female staff in the restaurant and hotel sector," Raihan said, calling the upsurge in the wage nominal.
The sector has been influenced hugely by Covid-19, which should have been included in the BBS report, he said.
"The Sanem conducts surveys every three months where hotels are also included. We've seen that many hotels have closed because of Covid-19. These issues must have come up in this report."
