Unemployment among Migrants in Russia Exacerbating Poverty in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 31 – Many Russians and those who follow the Moscow media have been afraid that rising unemployment among immigrant workers from Central Asia will spark an increase in crime there. That hasn’t happened, but their lack of work has ended their transfer payments home and increased poverty and government deficits in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

            In fact, the declines of transfer payments have been so large that in the case of Tajikistan, Tajik families are having to send ever more money to their relatives in the Russian Federation while receiving less and less back from them (ritmeurasia.org/news--2020-05-30--tadzhikistan-i-kyrgyzstan-bystro-bednejut-bez-denezhnyh-perevodov-migrantov-49260).

            Experts on Central Asia say that the collapse in the amount of money being sent to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan by their citizens in the Russian Federation is already having disastrous consequences on the standards of living in both as well as leading to more debt in government accounts and more borrowing from abroad generally.

            Igor Shestakov, the vice president of the Pikir Club of Regional Experts in Kyrgyzstan, says that last year immigrant workers in Russia sent home 2.5 billion US dollars but this year the figure will be only a small fraction of that. People are suffering and business and government are struggling to stay afloat.

            “I have said for a long time that if a significant part of migrants were to return to Kyrgyzstan, then we could expect revolutions every week.” They would add to the ranks of the unemployed and “various political forces” would make use of them to challenge and possibly overthrow the existing political order.

            “This year, Shestakov says, “about 80,000 to 100,000 migrants may return.” They won’t find a place for themselves but will only wait until the economy in Russia turns the corner and they can return there. This situation will last “a minimum of two years,” and Kyrgyzstan doesn’t know what to do with them or with the loss of money from the migrants.

            Nurgul Akimova, a Kyrgyz economist, adds that the decline in money transfers led to a decline in her country’s GDP of 3.8 percent in the first quarter.  But what is most worrisome is that Kyrgyzstan has been running a deficit in foreign accounts of some three billion US dollars a year. That has been mostly covered by the transfer payments. Now those are ending.

            Gleb Kovalenko, a political analyst at Moscow State University’s branch in Dushanbe, says that transfer payments had been falling even before the onset of the pandemic. But the situation has become dire not only for Tajik migrants who have no income but also for Tajiks in the homeland who aren’t getting money on which they relied.

            The urban economy is collapsing, and the government is talking about “tightening belts” because its income has fallen as well, Kovalenko says.  And because nearly half of the population works for the government, their future now appears bleak, especially if this crisis lasts into next year or longer.

            Negmatullo Mirsaidov, a Tajik political scientist, says that transfer payments will likely fall 30 to 40 percent more and he adds that one measure of how bad things are for migrants is that in the last two months, Tajiks in Tajikistan have sent almost as much money to the migrants as the migrants have sent home.

            According to the political scientist, this has hit urban residents more than rural ones; but he implies that this may change. “Today, no one has any doubts that in 2020, the standard of living [in Tajikistan] will fall enough to be felt by everyone” and that this will have political consequences as well.