Impoverished Tajikistan, which relies heavily on money sent home by migrant workers to prop up its economy, saw remittances fall 31.3 percent in 2009, the country's central bank chief said Monday. The plunge in remittances, which the bank says accounted for 39 percent of the ex-Soviet state's GDP last year, illustrates the mounting financial hardships facing the poorest country in Central Asia. 'Last year 1.833 billion dollars (1.29 billion euros) arrived in Tajikistan, which is 31.3 percent less than in 2008,' Tajik National Bank chairman Sharif Rakhimzod told reporters. 'This drop in the amount of money was due to the global financial and economic crisis that affected the labour sphere of migrants working in Russia,' he added. Tajikistan, which shares a rugged border with war-torn Afghanistan, fought a civil war in the 1990s against a coalition of Islamists and liberals that left as many as 50,000 people dead and decimated its economy. Around 680,000 citizens out of a total population of 7.5 million have left the country seeking work abroad, according to interior ministry statistics, while many unofficial estimates put the number at over one million. But Tajikistan's migrant labourers, the bulk of whom work in construction in Russia and Kazakhstan, have found it increasingly difficult to earn as those countries have struggled with the impact of the economic crisis. The collapse in remittances has pushed authorities to seek other ways to drive the ailing Tajik economy, foremost among them the development of the mountainous country's hydroelectric potential. Earlier this month Tajikistan started a mass share sale to raise 1.4 billion dollars to complete construction of a Soviet-era hydroelectric power plant it hopes will allow the country to become a net exporter of electricity. 