Today.Az » World news » Armenia struggling with outflows migration
09 August 2014 [10:54] - Today.Az
By AzerNews
Migration has turned into a huge problem for Armenia, which has been witnessing high outflows of its population over the past years.
The Armenian government is still grappling with demographic problem and can't prevent the emigration of its people.
Some 45.000-50.000 people leave Armenia annually. Deteriorating socio-economic situation, high poverty, growing unemployment and absence of hope for a bright future are said to be among the main primary reasons behind the mass migration outflows.
Head of Armenia's State Migration Service, Gagik Yeganyan told Armenia's Joxovurd newspaper recently that today it is impossible to have an accurate estimation of Armenian emigration.
Yeganyan said the published figures refer only to border crossings. "To obtain comprehensive data on emigration, we should have sociological surveys. However, the surveys are not enough by themselves.
Recently, the Armenian media reported that great crowd has been observed in the Zvatrnos airport in Yerevan during the last ten days. All the tickets to the airplanes departing Yerevan has been sold, according to report.
The Armenian media reported in 2013, 179,620 people left Armenia. However, the numbers of the Armenians who have left since the beginning of 2014 have reached to 282,098.
The Armenian government has allocated 13 million drams to the State Committee on Science on the initiative of former Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan in 2013 for Committee to order a study into migration. However, the results of this study haven't been published to this date.
The Armenian people are fed up with the economic problems in the country as the Armenian government is unable to tackle the economic crisis.
In addition, the frequently rising prices in the country pour oil into the fire. Some 3.4 percent increase was observed in Armenia within six months of this year compared to the same period of last year.
Armenia's National Statistical Service said recently 1.3 percent rise was observed in primary demand products, while prices of alcoholic beverages and cigarettes increased by 7.3 percent.
Price hike will undoubtedly aggravate life in the post-Soviet republic when every one third of the citizens are living in poverty.
Armenia's Migration Geography's recent survey showed that 40 percent of Armenia's populations plan to leave the country.
The Armenians see the migration as their only way to flee the poverty. Majority of them leave their country forever.
Due to the growing migration outflows, the number of Armenia's population keeps decreasing.
The number of population was 3.1 million as of July 1 decreasing by 15,000 in the first three months of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013.
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