Operating costs of refugee reception centres reduce

The costs of receiving asylum seekers continued to decrease in the year under review.

The costs of reception amounted to about EUR 189 million in 2018, compared to EUR 282 million in 2017, said the Finnish Immigration Service in a bulletin.

The average cost of one day of accommodation went down roughly to its pre-2015 level, being EUR 48 per person in the year under review as compared to EUR 55 in the previous year. The average cost includes all reception centre expenses, such as the centre's rent and property maintenance, employees’ salaries, services and the reception allowance paid to residents.

Some reception centres have been closed, because the number of asylum seekers arriving in Finland has decreased. The number of asylum applications received in the year under review was 4,548, down about 10% on the previous year. About half of these were re-applications. The number of applicants in the reception system decreased from 13,100 to about 10,680 in the course of the year under review.

Nevertheless, the asylum seeker situation that emerged in 2015 continues to have an impact on the agency’s operations. The process has dragged on for some applicants, because some of those whose applications have been rejected have appealed to administrative courts, and many of those who have already received an asylum decision have filed re-applications. Processing these asylum applications proved to be more challenging than before due to the new grounds cited in the re-applications.