VIENNA, Jan. 19 (Xinhua) -- Austria has seen a 57 percent increase in the number of decisions on asylum applications in 2016, the Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum (BFA) said on Thursday.
Some 57,493 applications had been decided on in the year, with 27,767 approved, the BFA said in a press release.
BFA director Wolfgang Taucher said the figures mean Austria is now in the top five countries in the European Union in terms of asylum decisions.
He further noted that the boost in decisions came in line with the goal of significantly reducing the backlog in applications by the middle of 2018.
The BFA figures also showed that Syrian nationals had by far the highest asylum approval rate of 89 percent, with Somali nationals next with 57 percent approval rate.
