Lithuania will need at least 300,000 immigrants by 2050

Lithuania will need at least 300,000 immigrants in the next 30 years to compensate for demographic losses due a negative natural population growth rate, the business daily Verslo Zinios reported on Wednesday.

The country will need to attract even more immigrants to offset outward migration. Otherwise, it may become a rapidly aging society that will never catch up with Western countries, it wrote.

The paper cited a study by the International Monetary Fund that predicts that Lithuania's population will shrink by 17 percent by 2050. The decline in the working-age population is forecast to be even more severe, at 28 percent.