YEREVAN, August 22. /ARKA/. In June 2022, Russian households transferred a record $4.65 billion to their accounts in foreign banks, the Russian business daily ‘Kommersant’ says, citing statistics from the Central Bank of Russia.
“Thus, Armenian received more than $450 million in remittances from the Russian Federation in June, or more than 75% of all individual money transfers made to Armenia in June, which is an absolute record that is almost double the previous one set in May ($266 million),” according to the daily.
Prior to May, the biggest volume of remittances from Russia to Armenia was registered in July 2013 -about $200mln.
The volume of remittances from Russia to Kazakhstan increased by half in June comparing to May amounting to over $140 million or 73% of all private money transfers to that country from abroad as compared to a little less than $95 million (66%) in May.
Money transfers from Russia to Kyrgyzstan in June exceeded $300 million, although in May they were slightly above $245 million. In Georgia, remittances from Russia are decreasing after the peak in May – $313 million. In June, this figure dropped to $231 million, and in July, it almost halved to $101 million.
Experts attribute this trend to the fact that Russians are sending money to foreign accounts to top up their cards of international payment systems (IPS) opened abroad, to withdraw currency from accounts at Russian banks to avoid fees for their maintenance, as well as to participate in the so-called parallel imports.
The net inflow of private money transfers to Armenia in the first half of 2022 amounted to over $978.9 million, with a 2.56-fold increase compared to the first half of 2021, according to the Central Bank of Armenia.
The net inflow of private money transfers in April-June surged by 4.2 times compared to the first quarter of this year – from almost $183.3 million to $791.7 million.
According to the Central Bank, money transfers from Russia prevail. In the first half of the year, nearly $917.5 million were remitted to Armenia, almost a five-fold rise compared to the first quarter of 2021.
Net inflows of money transfers from the U.S. came close to $187.6 million, up from $167.8 million in January-June 2021. However, the share of money transfers from the USA fell to 19.2% in the total inflow from 43.8% a year earlier. –0–
