Tajik migrants send nearly 2.3 bn dollars home in 2010
Tajik migrant workers, who are mainly working in Russia, sent nearly 2.29bn dollars to Tajikistan last year, which is a 25-per-cent increase compared to 2009, the chairman of the National Bank of Tajikistan, Sharif Rahimzoda, has told journalists.
20 January 2011
"There are no final data on the sizes of remittances for 2010 yet, but the annual increase was at least 25 per cent," Rahimzoda said during a press conference. In the crisis year of 2009, migrant workers from Tajikistan transferred 1,833,900 dollars to their country, which was 31.3 per cent less than the record size of remittances sent to the country in 2008, when this figure was 2.2bn dollars.
"We can speak about full restoration of the market of migrant workers to the level of the pre-crisis year of 2008," the head of the Tajik National Bank said.
According to his data, in January-November 2010 in comparison with the same period of 2009, the size of remittances of Ta! jik migrant workers grew by 27 per cent to 2.1bn dollars or 37 per cent of Tajikistan's GDP for the entire 2010.
According to official data, there are currently over 730,000 Tajik citizens in Russia. However, independent observers believe that the number of the migrants fluctuate within one million people depending on the season.
Source: Interfax news agency