Page 36 - UKRRptMay19

A fifth (21%) of Ukraine’s work force has left the country to seek work elsewhere, according to official statistics. While the money they send home is very useful and helps balance the national accounts, it also prevents the economic recovery as the best workers are elsewhere. Last year’s remittances were up 19% over remittances in 2017.
“This surge in remittances also reflects a revised methodology for estimating incoming remittances, as well as growth in neighboring countries' demand for migrant workers," according to the World Bank's latest Migration and Development Brief, as cited by UNIAN.
After posting 22% growth in 2017, remittances to Europe and Central Asia grew an estimated 11% to $59bn in 2018, the World Bank said.
The National Bank estimated the volume of remittances to Ukraine in 2018 at $10.888bn, which was 17.5% up from 2017. The largest amount of remittances to Ukraine comes from Poland, Russia, USA, Czech Republic and Italy. The volume of remittances from Poland, where an estimated 2mn Ukrainians are now working, grew by 16.4% compared with the previous year, while those from Russia shrank by 26.6%.
36 UKRAINE Country Report May 2019 www.intellinews.com