In 2021, Ukrainian workers sent a record $15 billion to Ukraine

Ukrainian labor migrants transferred a record amount of money to their homeland in 2021 – $15 billion. This is almost 3 billion more than in 2020.

About it they say preliminary calculations of the National Bank. In the same year, 8.1 billion received through the official channel (in 2020 – 7 billion), and 6.8 billion – through unofficial transfers (in 2020 it was 3.6 billion), and the last amount in the National Bank may count only on the basis of rumors.

According to official transfers, workers sent $4.04 billion as a salary, another $4.09 billion – as other private transfers to correspondent accounts of banks and through international payment systems.

According to the results of the three quarters of 2021, the countries from which funds are sent to Ukraine became known. Most of all, $4.3 billion, came from Poland. The top three included the US ($1.1 billion) and Britain ($0.8 billion). The report did not include money sent from Russia, as officially almost 4 million Ukrainians who work there mysteriously disappeared from the National Bank report due to political reasons.

Remittances from Ukrainian labor migrants are one of the largest sources of foreign exchange in the economy. In 2019, they amounted to 7.7% of Ukraine’s GDP, in 2018 – 8.3% of Ukraine’s GDP, and in fact, this is at least half of the revenue side of the Ukrainian budget.

Director of the Institute of Demography and Social Research of the National Academy of Sciences Ella Libanova informedthat in 2021 there were about 2.5-3 million Ukrainian workers abroad. But either Russia is not a foreign country for Ms. Ella, or, for the same political reasons, they are not included in this list.

In reality, there are at least 10 million Ukrainians outside Ukraine, some of whom already permanently live abroad, as the author of the publication, and either completely stopped sending money home or transfer it extremely irregularly.

Thus, according to the NBU, net wages in the total structure of transfers account for 71%, and transfers of permanent migrants – 8%. The “other” section has a large share – 21%.

Therefore, this amount of $15 billion can be safely doubled, and, accordingly, its impact on the economy of the country, whose GDP is $195 billion, and the revenue part only slightly exceeds $40 billion, can be increased.

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