External Migration is natural for Armenia

“There is a view that migration is a move from developing countries to Europe, North America and Australia while most moves appear within a country, not between the countries,” said deputy chief of the Migration Agency of Armenia Irina Davtyan at UN Human Development reporting.

Various estimates show 740 million internal migrants, it is four times more than number of international migrants. Only third (it’s about 70 million) moves from developing countries to developed states. Poor people from poor countries have the least move index, for example, only 1 per cent of African population has moved to Europe.

Irina Davtyan said that external migration and emigration are natural for Armenia. For about 1 million people emigrated from Armenia over past 20 years. It is a third of population. 2/3 of migrants choose Russia; about 9% of them move to CIS-countries, and 15% to Europe and 10% to United States. “The emigration is caused mainly by social and economic reasons.”

The volume of remittances to Armenia was annually about $ 2 billion (20% of GDP) before crisis. Studies show that 80-85% of financial proceeds are spent on operating costs, while the rest of them (about $400 million annually) mostly kept at home.