Russia has become depopulated and needs immigrants.

"Russia needs policy of encouraging immigration", this statement was made by President of Russian Chamber of Industry and Commerce Evgeny Primakov  at the meeting at “Mercury Club” – the institution for informal communication between businessmen and authorities.
”We need immigrants to populate some strategically important regions of Russia which are currently deserted”, said Mr. Primakov. According to him, the entire world benefits from immigrants, and Russia should not “be isolated from the widely-spread policy ".
 
 Evgeny Primakov said that Russia is in the pressing need of immigrants because of the negative trends in its labor market. He said that the number of young people is reducing, and this results in less amount of labor force in the labor market.  The number of companies having surplus of labor force, reduced from 45 percent in 1998 to 12 percent in 2003, the number of companies having lack of personnel increased from 10 percent to 25 percent for the same period of time.

Mr. Primakov called the low mobility of labor force in Russia as a negative trends resulting in lagging behind of the regions of Siberia and the Far East.

According to the Chamber Chairman, the low mobility of the labor force made “about 6 million Russian-speaking immigrants from the former republics of the USSR to get stuck in the European part of Russia”.

Source: Information agencies