Manila Bulletin

Cash remittance­s up 3.1% to $23.8 billion

- By LEE C. CHIPONGIAN

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.

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