According to the Armenian Central Bank, such transfers totaled $2.52 billion in the six-month period, with almost two-thirds of the sum wired from Russia.
Armenians working in Russia as well as the United States and other countries on a permanent or temporary basis had long generated the bulk of the remittances benefiting a considerable part of Armenia’s population. This changed after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the resulting barrage of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow.
The sanctions have had significant positive side-effects on the Armenian economy, with many local entrepreneurs taking advantage of them to re-export various Western-manufactured goods to Russia. Also, tens of thousands of mostly young and well-educated Russians relocated to the South Caucasus country in the course of 2022.
Consequently, the officially recorded remittances skyrocketed from $2.1 billion in 2021 to $5.2 billion in 2022 and $5.7 billion in 2023. The remittances from Russia quadrupled to almost $3.6 billion in 2022.
Many of the Russian expats in Armenia are believed to have returned home or moved to third countries. More importantly, there are growing signs of a downward trend in the sanctions-driven re-exports that began last fall. Government data shows that Armenia’s overall exports to Russia tumbled by over 20 percent, to $1.4 billion, in the first half of 2024.
The Armenian Central Bank governor, Martin Galstian, suggested other factors behind the falling remittances during a July 30 news conference in Yerevan. In his words, there has been a significant drop in the number of Armenians travelling to Russia for seasonal work (mainly in construction) due to a narrowing gap between dollar-denominated wages in the two countries.
Galstian also argued that Armenian banks have seriously restricted their transactions with Russia because of having to comply with relevant U.S. sanctions. As a result, he said, a growing number of seasonal migrant workers choose to carry the money earned by them in Russia in cash, rather than transfer it to Armenian bank accounts, when they return to Armenia.