Tajik migrants working in Russia sent to $2.96 billion in remittances to their families in Tajikistan in 2011, over 30 percent more than the previous year, National Bank Deputy Chairman Malokhat Kholikzoda said on Thursday.

Emigrants’ remittances contributed 45 percent to the country’s GDP last year. The previous record was set in 2008, when money transfers made up $2.52 billion or 49 percent of GDP.

Tajikistan Migration Service data show that slightly over one million citizens of the poorest country from the former Soviet republics are currently working in Russia. More than half of families in Tajikistan live on migrants’ remittances.

In mid-2011, the average monthly salary in Tajikistan topped $100 for the first time in the country’s modern history.