Overseas students are becoming an important source of revenues to the budget of cash-strapped Ukraine, contributing about 500 million US dollars to the country's economy per year, a senior education official said Thursday.

"The international students expenditures became almost equal to the state spending to finance public higher education in Ukraine," Oleg Derevianko, Deputy Education Minister, told an educational forum in Kiev.

Foreign students pay about 2,000 dollars a year on average to study at Ukraine's universities and spend additional 6,000 dollars on their living expenses, Derevianko said.

Overall, there were roughly 63,000 international students in Ukraine in the 2014-2015 academic year compared with about 70,000 a year before.

About half of the foreign students came from the Commonwealth of Independent States, primarily from Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Russia.

Besides, about 4,500 students from India and 3,500 students from China were studying in Ukraine last year.