Official emigration statistics account for only about one-fifth of the actual number of citizens who move abroad every year, Federal Migration Service chief Konstantin Romodanovsky said Tuesday.
Before the global credit crisis in late 2008, Russia was losing about 70,000 to 80,000 people a year to emigration, Romodanovsky said.
“Now the official numbers are lower, but the real figures are four to five times bigger” because a lot of people don’t declare their intentions to move abroad, he said.
His agency recorded 33,577 emigrants in 2010 and 32,458 the year before.