YEREVAN, December 25. /ARKA/. A new electronic platform, designed largely for Armenian labor migrants -sendmoneyarmeina.am - is to simplify the money transfers from abroad to Armenia , the head of the State Migration Service Gagik Yeganyan said.

"The website provides complete information about how to send money to Armenia from abroad, about the available money transfer systems, as well as about the time needed for a money transfer to reach Armenia and the amount of commission," Yeganyan told reporters on Monday.

According to him, the availability of this type of information will trigger increased competition among money transfer systems and result in lower prices for remittances. Our calculations show that cutting the relating costs by only 5% will save Armenia about $20 million a year," Yeganyan said.

He said currently the website contains information about eight countries, where from the bulk of remittances to Armenia come. They are Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, France, the United States, Britain, Germany and Spain.

"The Central Bank of Armenia provides us with information on remittances from the countries we have chosen, which we call corridors. In these corridors we identify the main operators through which money transfers are made. The information will be updated on a quarterly basis," Yeganyan said.

According to official data, about $1.397.7 billion were remitted to Armenia in the first ten months of 2017, by 16.7% more than in the same period last year. -0-