Emigrants support Lithuania’s economy

Emigrants from Lithuania are an important factor for the domestic economy: As the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported recently, according to a World Bank estimate, emigrants from Lithuania transferred a total of €926.80 million to their former homeland in 2010. This represents an increase of around 8.5 percent compared with the previous year and a decrease of 7.5 percent compared with the remittances sent by emigrants from Lithuania in 2008.

Lithuanian emigrants: An important factor for Lithuania’s domestic economy

According to the World Bank, more than 440,000 citizens have emigrated from their homeland, Lithuania, in recent years. This figure amounts to about 13.5 percent of Lithuania’s total population. Most emigrants chose a new home in Poland, Great Britain, Russia, Ireland, Israel, the United States of America (USA), Spain, Canada, Germany and Latvia. Lithuania’s economy depends heavily on remittances from its emigrated citizens: the sums sent by Lithuanians living and working abroad support the economy and gross domestic product of this young state. Emigrants from Lithuania sent around 6 percent less money in 2009 than in 2008. According to World Bank research, this amount roughly corresponds to the contraction of Lithuania’s economy in 2009.

13.5 percent of the total population of Lithuania has emigrated—a remarkably large number of Lithuanians who have turned their backs on their homeland. But the transfers to their former homeland clearly show that the emigrants have by no means forgotten it.