UZBEKISTAN: REMITTANCES PLUMMET, NGO REPORTS

Remittances to Uzbekistan have plunged an estimated 90 percent or more since January, according to an estimate by Uzbek NGO activists.
Group Rapid Response, a non-governmental group based in Uzbekistan, issued a statement saying that remittances in January and February were down on average 90-92 percent nationwide. Andijan, in the Ferghana Valley, was hardest hit with a 97-percent decrease.
"If in the middle of 2008, each bank branch served 70 to 600 customers daily, today relatives receiving money [from abroad] do not have to stand in long lines. Their number has declined to 10-20 people per day," Uznews.net quoted the statement as saying March 12. In February, Unistream, a money transfer company claiming 22 percent of the Uzbek market, said that in 2008 it had handled transactions from Russia to Uzbekistan worth $787 million.
Official data on the value of remittances from migrant workers is not released in Uzbekistan. But the United Nations has estimated remittances constitute at least 10 percent of gross domestic product. Partial data indicates that the amount of remittances sent to Uzbekistan during the first half of 2008 approached $2 billion.
Group Rapid Response provided no information regarding its methodology and sources of information for the research.
LI: Some alarming or alarmist content to this story. There is a well documented decline in remittances to central Asia but if these drops are substantiated this will have a massive impact on Uzbekistan.