Moldova included on top ten countries with most persons left abroad

Chisinau, 2 February /MOLDPRES/ - About 22 per cent of Moldova’s citizens work abroad, according to a ranking worked out by a prestigious publication Daily Mail. Moldova is on the sixth position on this top, after Bosnia & Herzegovina, Albania, Macedonia, Portugal and Montenegro.     

According to a map published by the British daily, Moldova is on top ten countries with most citizens left abroad.

The publication refers to all the number of Moldovans who settled abroad, work or study there. Data with which various institutions operate differ very much, hundreds of thousands in some cases. Thus, while some politicians say that about 600,000-700,000 Moldovan citizens work in Russia, the Federal Migration Service of Russia operates with a figure of 500,000, and some experts estimate a number of 300,000-400,000 citizens. “The free visa regime certainly triggers a large flow of foreign migrants to Russia,” Moscow officials said.       

According to the National Statistics Institute of Italy, 142,266 Moldovan citizens were working in this country in 2016, of whom 66 per cent are women. Italian official statistics also shows that most Moldovans work in the regions Veneto, Lombardy and Emilia Romagna. The Moldovans have a share of 2.5 per cent of all migrants in Italy. The number of Moldovan fellow countrymen who work in Italy has increased by 40,000 in the last five years.     

Unofficial data shows that about 50,000 citizens of Moldova work in Portugal.  

There are about 250,000-300,000 emigrants from Moldova in the European Union countries, according to authors of an international project carried out by the Warsaw-based Centre for Eastern Studies.     

The World Bank estimates the number of Moldovans working abroad, including seasonally, at 750,000-800,000 persons. Data by the National Statistics Bureau shows that, in 2015, 325,400 people were left abroad to work or seek jobs, of whom 206,200 in Russia.   

According to the report on inflation, unveiled by the National Bank of Moldova on 1 February, 45.3 per cent of the transfers and incomes of persons working abroad came from the Commonwealth of Independent States member countries and 54.7 per cent - from the rest of the world.    

(Reporter V. Bercu, editor A. Raileanu)