ARMENIAN POPULATION TO REDUCE BY 200THND BY 2025

ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Aug 14 2007

YEREVAN, August 14. /ARKA/. Armenian population is to reduce by 200thnd
by 2025, World Bank says in its report on demographic situation in
former soviet republics.

According to the report, former soviet republics will face grave
demographic problems – their population will reduce and become older.

By 2025, former USSR republics will lose a considerable part of
their population (2000 and 2025 were compared): Russia – 17.3mln
(12% of population), Ukraine 11.8mln (24%), Belarus 1.4mln (14%),
Georgia 0.8mln (17%), Lithuania 0.4mln (11%), Latvia, Moldova and
Kazakhstan 0.3mln each (13.7% and 2%) and Estonia 0.1mln (9%).

The report says that Uzbekistan’s population will grow 9.3mln,
Tajikistan’s 2.6mln, Turkmenistan’s 1.6mln, Azerbaijan’s 1.5mln and
Kyrgyzstan 1.3mln by 2025.

The WB specialists think that this is the only region in the world
where the population increasingly becoming older, bad living conditions
and incomplete economic, social and political reforms pose such a
greave threat to local economies and statehood.

The report says that the reduced population will become far older –
in 2025, one in every five residents of this region will be in age
above 65.