BAKU, September 7 (RIA Novosti, Geray Dadashev) - Among the CIS countries, only Russia and Belarus have a positive balance of migration, a Russian official said Wednesday.
Alexander Kurtin, the president of the International Association of Pension and Social Funds, said that in 2003, immigration compensated for depopulation in Russia by 10% and in Belarus by 10.5%.
In the remaining CIS countries, there is a negative balance of migration, he said, speaking at the conference for Globalization and Social Protection of Labor Migrants, which began Wednesday in the Azeri capital. In 2003, the highest levels of migration out of CIS countries were in Armenia (25 people in every 10,000), Kyrgyzstan (33) and Tajikistan (17).
