15 February 2008

VOORBURG – The number of inhabitants of the Netherlands increased by 46,000 last year. The Netherlands counted a population of 16.4 million as of 1 January 2008. This emerged from figures published on Friday by Statistics Netherlands (CBS).
 
The statistics agency says the increase was twice that of 2006. CBS attributes this increase last year to rising immigration and falling emigration figures compared to a year earlier.

Almost 181,000 children were born in the Netherlands last year, just over 4,000 less than in 2006. CBS says this number is declining along with the number of women aged about 30. The number of deaths, 133,000, was also lower than in the previous year.

Immigration increased b y 15 percent, to almost 117,000 people. More than 10,000 Poles came to the Netherlands, along with 7,000 Germans and almost 5,000 Bulgarians. Immigration from Poland increased by just over a fifth, while the number of Bulgarians increased almost 14-fold.

The immigration of people born in Morocco (almost 2,000) and Turkey (almost 3,000) however declined.

Emigration fell slightly last year, to 123,000 emigrants. This is still much higher than at the beginning of the century, according to CBS. Almost half of the emigrants were born in the Netherlands.

The other two largest groups of emigrants were Germans (5,000) and Poles (3,000).

[Copyright Expatica News + ANP 2008]

Subject: Dutch news