Cash remittances up 3.1% to $23.8 billion

Remittances sent through the banks grew by 3.1 percent year-on-year in the first 10 months to $23.8 billion from $23.1 billion, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported.

These are cash remittances or bank-channeled fund transfers as opposed to personal remittances which in the past are recorded by the BSP as the “padala system.” Cash remittances are more easily captured by the BSP since these go through the formal banking system.

For the January-October period, personal remittances amounted to $26.5 billion, up 2.9 percent year-on-year. By BSP definition, personal remittances are “the sum of net compensation of employees, personal transfers and capital transfers between households.” The central bank first released personal remittances’ data in mid-2012.

For the month of October alone, cash remittances increased by 8.7 percent yearon-year to $2.5 billion from $2.27 billion. The top countries that contributed to the increase were the US, Canada, and Taiwan, said the BSP. “Cash remittances from both land-based ($18.7 billion) and sea-based ($5 billion) workers grew by 2.8 percent and 4.2 percent year-on-year, respectively.”

About 79 percent of the total cash remittances were sent by overseas Filipinos from the US, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Japan, United Kingdom, Qatar, Canada, Germany, and Hong Kong. The BSP, as always, said that remittances’ date by source is limited since there is a common practice that correspondence banks used by remitters are mostly located in the US.

For the month of October, personal remittances rose by eight percent to $2.8 billion from $2.6 billion same time last year.

BSP Governor Nestor A. Espenilla Jr. in a statement said that personal remittances from land-based overseas Filipinos with work contracts of one year remitted $20.3 billion, up 2.8 percent year-on-year as of endOctober.