Ukrainian workers sent home an additional 50% — or $5 billion last year – through private, unofficial

Ukrainian workers sent home an additional 50% — or $5 billion last year – through private, unofficial channels – bus drivers, friends and relatives — Olexandr Okhrymenko, president of the Ukrainian Analytical Center, estimates to 112.ua news site. “Now migrant laborers have become the main source of currency in Ukraine, and this trend will be further strengthened in the coming decades…If there were no guest worker money, the dollar exchange rate in Ukraine would be more than UAH 50 UAH for one dollar. Ukraine could not boast of GDP growth of 3.1% for the first quarter of 2018, and it would be impossible to pay back almost one billion dollars of the previous IMF loans.” The number of Ukrainians traveling to Russia to work dropped in half last year, largely because salaries in Poland are 50% higher.