Remittances increase 5% to $16.1 B in seven months

Remittances sent home by overseas Filipinos via banking networks reached $16.095 billion in the first seven months of the year, up five percent year-on-year, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Officer-in-Charge Diwa C. Guinigundo announced yesterday.

“The sustained increase in OF remittances was supported by stable demand for skilled Filipino workers abroad,” according to a BSP statement quoting Guinigundo.

For the month of July alone, cash remittances increased by 7.1 percent year-on-year to $2.283 billion. The BSP official said the “primary contributors” by country to the expansion in fund transfers during the period were the US, United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Japan. The US contributed 3.3 percentage points to the remittances growth, while UAE, Singapore and Japan accounted for 1.1 percentage points, 0.8 percentage point, and 0.6 percentage point, respectively.

Guinigundo said remittances from land-based workers increased by 6.8 percent to $1.8 billion while those from sea-based workers went up by 8.4 percent to $500,000 compared to same time in 2016.

Personal remittances or transfers not coursed through the banks amounted to $17.923 billion as of end-July, this was 5.9 percent higher year-on-year. For July only, remittances reached $2.559 billion or up 8.7 percent compared to same period in 2016.

The steady growth in personal remittances drew support from the remittance inflows from land-based OF workers with work contracts of one year or more, amounting to $13.8 billion, and compensation of sea-based workers and land-based workers with short-term contracts (excluding their expenditures abroad), which reached $3.6 billion, the BSP stated.

In 2016, the total cash remittances amounted to $26.9 billion, higher than $25.6 billion in 2015. Personal remittances, in the meantime, reached $29.706 billion from $28.308 billion in the previous year. For this year, the BSP is expecting another four percent growth to total remittances.

Based on initial data from Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, there are 1,222,003 deployed Filipinos abroad for the January-July period. Last year, the POEA found overseas work for 2,112,331 Filipinos. To date, there is an estimated 10 to 12 million OF workers.