VILNIUS, March 27 (Xinhua) -- The amount of private remittances from Britain to Lithuania decreased by 20 percent in 2016, mostly due to Brexit, Justinas Markauskas, a senior economist at Lithuania's central bank, said in a commentary released on Monday.
"After three years of constant growth, it was the first year when remittances from the UK dropped, mostly due to Brexit," Markauskas was quoted as saying in the commentary.
In his words, depreciation of the British pound was one of the main reasons behind the drop.
Statistical data from Lithuania's central bank showed that the general level of private remittances from abroad to Lithuania shrank by 3.0 percent last year.
A total of 1.09 billion euros (1.19 billion U.S. dollars) of remittances was sent to Lithuania from abroad in 2016, compared to 1.13 billion euros in 2015.
"With the view of large fluctuations as regards data of remittances, these changes are not significant; the amount of remittances sent to Lithuania in 2013 and 2014 was significantly higher," Markauskas noted.
The United States, Britain and Russia were the three largest sources of remittances to Lithuania in 2016.
Lithuania, together with Poland, Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia, is one of the most reliant on remittances countries in the European Union (EU), local website vz.lt announced earlier, referring to data from Eurostat.
Britain, Ireland, Germany and Norway are the main emigration countries for Lithuanians, data from European Migration Network showed.(1 euro =1.09 U.S. dollars)
