8-year high growth in November

Cash inflows from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) posted an 18.5 percent year-on-year growth in November, the highest after the 24.6 percent growth in July 2008.

Data released by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) on Monday showed that cash remittances in the 11th month last year amounted to $2.22 billion, higher than the previous year’s $1.87 billion and the previous month’s $2.1 billion.

BSP Governor Amando M. $ Tetangco Jr., in a statement, said the bulk of the inflows last November came from the United States, United Arab Emirates, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

Inflows from sea-based workers went down due to stiffer competition among workers in East Asia and Eastern Europe, he said.

In the first 11 months last year, cash remittances that passed through the formal banking system surpassed anew the central bank’s four percent full-year target after rising by 5.2 percent to $24.34 billion from the previous year’s $23.1 billion.

Most of these inflows, or more than 80 percent of the total, came from the US, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Singapore, United Kingdom, Japan, Qatar, Kuwait, Hong Kong, and Germany, the BSP said.

”The improving global economic conditions, particularly in the US, may have contributed to the overall growth in remittances,” Tetangco said.

Personal remittances, which includes in-kind transfers, rose by 18.4 percent last November to $2.4 billion, bringing the total for the first 11 months last year to $26.9 billion, up 5.1 percent year- on-year.

Tetangco traced the big jump in remittances to the 7.8-percent hike of inflows from land-based workers with work contracts of one year and more, who sent a total of $20.9 billion.

“This made up for the 3.6 percent decline in remittances from sea-based and land-based workers with work contracts of less than one year totaling $5.5 billion,” he added.