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November 9, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 3
Coming out of such a deep depression in 2015
the bounce back should be significant — Russia’s economic growth hit 10% in 2000 following its own crisis in 1998 in a record that has yet to be beaten — but Ukraine’s growth in the last three years has been lacklustre.
Third quarter GDP growth in Ukraine actually slowed to 3.1% in annual terms, down from 3.8% in the second quarter, according to the NBU. And that was despite remittances arriving from workers abroad coming in at almost $1bn a month in the period, about 20% higher than the previous year’s levels.
Moreover, the economic outlook is deteriorating, although other factors are also to blame:
global growth is slowing, caused in part by the international trade wars and closer to home a marked slowdown is expected in Europe, led by Germany, where economic growth is expected to stall completely this year.
The IMF downgraded its outlook for Ukrainian GDP growth in 2019-2020 in October, the fund said in its World Economic Outlook report, lowering its estimate for the growth in 2019 to 2.7% from 3.3% projected in April. In addition, the IMF worsened the forecast for GDP growth in 2020 to 3.4% from 4%, but improved this figure for 2018, to 3.5% from 3.2%.
Home alone
While the money they send home is easy to meas- ure, it is not entirely clear how many Ukrainians have left the country, but it is clear a lot of them have gone to Poland. According to the latest Inter- national Migration Outlook 2018, published annu- ally by the OECD, in 2017 Poland became a global leader in the inflow of foreign, seasonal, short- term workforces, according to Jaroszewicz.
“This is unusual because Poland has never been a country of immigration, and indeed still remains a country of emigration,” she adds.
According to Poland’s Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy, the number of Ukrainian
citizens who had obtained valid declarations of intent to employ a foreigner by December 31, 2017 reached 517,000 people, while another 208,000 Ukrainians had a work permit.
“To this number should be added the group
of around 100,000 Ukrainian citizens who are permanently resident in Poland and do not need
a work permit, or who are studying or living in Poland for reasons other than work. In total, this gives a number of around 900,000 migrants from Ukraine resident in Poland at the end of 2017.
By the end of 2018, these numbers are likely to
be lower due to the introduction of new rules for the employment of foreigners,” says Jaroszewicz. Other estimates put the total Ukrainian population in Poland at 2mn.
The move to Poland represents a marked
break with the past, where Russia used to
be the destination of choice. A legacy of the
Soviet past means that all the members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) retain their visa-free right to travel, reside and work in Russia (although Ukraine has left the CIS as a result of its conflict with Russia).
Currently 4.4mn Ukrainians live in Russia, accord- ing to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but about one million of those are official refugees from the con- flict in eastern Ukraine. In addition there are 1.2mn in Canada, 940,000 in the US, 500,000 in Brazil and 230,000 in Germany, according to the ministry.
And the number of Ukrainians moving to the other countries of Central Europe are likely to increase. Poland has been fast to welcome Ukrainian casual labour and make it easy for them to get jobs, but the other Central European states, which suffer from the same labour shortages, are close behind.
“Poland’s neighbouring countries have started
to open up their labour markets to citizens of Ukraine to a limited degree; for example, the Czech Republic has increased its quotas for labour migrants, and Hungary has introduced an easier procedure for acquiring citizenship. Only in