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A total of 56,501 foreign laborers will receive official permits to work in the Russian Far Eastern territory this year, with Primorye accepting 6,701 workers, or 12 percent.

This year’s number of foreign workers in Primorye has been cut by 2.4 times compared to the corresponding figure in 2006, while Sakhalin and Khabarovsk were assigned the more considerable amounts of 14,994 and 14,990 foreign workers respectively.

According to this year’s quota for the foreign workforce in the country established by the Russian Government, the Amur region will receive 12,699 foreign laborers. The least number of workers is allowed for Kamchatka. The only region which will not receive a foreign workforce is Koryakia, the statement said.

Overall, Russia’s Government established a total limit of 308, 842 foreign laborers in the country for 2007, the statement said.

Most of the foreign workers flowing into the Primorye, Khabarovsk and Amur regions are Chinese, with the other two big labor force exporters being North Korea and Vietnam. Foreign workers are mainly involved in construction, agricultural, trade and sewing industries.

The considerable decrease in the arriving labor force is linked to the federal law which limited the number of foreign workers in Russian markets. According to the law, which was passed in mid January, all working migrants were eliminated from the country’s marketplaces starting this April. Another cause of the decrease in the foreign labor force is a federal program urging Russian immigrants to move from other regions to the sparsely populated Far East.