Since Russia invaded Ukraine, a record number of passports have been issued in Lithuania.
According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, since the end of February, when Russia invaded Ukraine, a record number of passports have been issued in Lithuania. A spokesperson for the MIA told BNS that from February 24 to September 30 of this year, almost 319,000 Lithuanian passports had been issued.
This number is almost 48,000 higher than during the same period in 2013, when a similar record was set.
As the number of Lithuanians wishing to obtain passports increased, in addition to the need to issue temporary residence permits to war refugees from Ukraine, the Personal Document Issuance Centre of the ministry responsible for this suffered unexpected costs of about €2 million.
That was reportedly the cost to the institution for the additional purchase of permits for temporary residence in Lithuania for foreigners and Lithuanian passport forms.
According to the data provided by the Ministry of the Interior, the Centre for Issuing Personal Documents issued 58,000 documents from February 24 to September 30.
As a result, the centre suffered a loss of almost €1.2 million in additional costs, as the price of one such form is €20. The centre spent over €891,000 in addition on purchasing blank passport forms, the price of each being €18.60.
The Government allocated these funds to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in a decision made this week. The Migration Department faced a shortage of passport forms in July and as a result, temporarily reduced the number of documents issued.
It was previously announced that the same number of passports were issued in six months of this year as in the entire year of 2021. Due to the increased need for assistance for Ukrainian residents, the Department of Migration suspended the reception of residents for about a month in March.
This occurred because after the start of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, there was a significant increase in the number of Lithuanian citizens applying for change of residence documents, as reported by diena.lt.
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