Germany expects up to 300,000 migrants to arrive in the country this year, the head of its Federal Office for Migration and Refugees said in a German newspaper.

“We’re preparing for 250,000 to 300,000 refugees this year,” BAMF head Frank-Juergen Weise told Bild am Sonntag newspaper in comments due to be published on Sunday.

Weise also said Germany took in fewer migrants — most of whom came from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan — last year than previously thought because some were mistakenly registered twice and others had since left Germany.

The German interior ministry says more than 390,000 people applied for asylum in the first six months of this year, but it is not clear how many of these may have arrived in the country in 2015.

“We’ll present the exact number soon but it’s certain that less than one million people came to Germany last year,” he said.

Mr Weise said Germany would try to get as many of them on the job market as possible. But he said the migrants’ integration in German society “would take a long time and cost a lot”.

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