World Bank report cover.

A new World Bank report on the economies of the six Balkan countries, published on Monday, warns that the region is losing a vital part of its young and educated population and urges governments to take action to deal with the consequences.

“The SEE6 countries [Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina] are among the top migrant-sending regions in the world. Today the equivalent of a quarter of the current population of SEE6 lives outside their home countries,” the biannual report said.

“Since the early 1990s, there has been a steady flow of migrants from the SEE6 to the EU with roughly 4.9 million people, having left their countries,” it added.

The report said that unlike in the 1990s when people were fleeing conflict in the Balkans, most of the current emigrants leave for economic reasons.

“Low growth since the global financial crisis, chronically high unemployment, income levels at a third of the average of the EU, and vulnerability to external shocks and natural disasters, have constrained domestic income generation in the region. As such, people continue to emigrate in search of better economic opportunities,” it said.

“The majority of migrants are young, of working age, and generally with higher educational attainment than the respective age group in the home countries,” it added.

All the Western Balkan countries have experienced renewed emigration to Western Europe during the past year.

The number of asylum seekers registered in Germany from the region almost tripled to 78,000 during the six months from January to June 2015 compared to the previous year.

“This gives further impetus to SEE6 countries to take policy actions to mitigate the negative impact of ongoing demographic transformations in their countries, in particular the aging and shrinking of its societies,” the World Bank Report said.

It urged governments to invest inhuman capital and create income-generating opportunities at home in order to motivate young people to stay or return from abroad and counteract the problems of ageing societies.