Remittances up by 2.9%

Personal remittances from overseas Filipinos (OFs) for the first 10 months of the year reached US$26.5 billion, equivalent to a 2.9 percent year-on-year growth.

For October alone, personal remittances totaled $2.8 billion, higher by 8.0 percent from $2.6 billion a year ago, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Gov. Nestor A. Espenilla Jr. announced on Monday, Dec. 17.

Personal remittances from land-based OFs with work contracts of one year or more posted an increase of 2.8 percent (at $20.3 billion), while those from sea-based and land-based OFs with work contracts of less than one year increased by 4.2 percent (at $5.5 billion) for January to October of 2018.

Likewise, for the first 10 months of 2018, cash remittances reached $23.8 billion, or a 3.1 percent increase compared to the $23.1 billion registered in the same period in 2017.

In October 2018, cash remittances from OFs coursed through banks grew by 8.7 percent yearon-year to $2.5 billion. The top countries that contributed to the increase were the United States, Canada, and Taiwan. Cash remittances from both land-based ($18.7 billion) and sea-based ($5.0 billion) workers grew by 2.8 percent and 4.2 percent year-onyear, respectively.

By country source, 79 percent of the total cash remittances for the first 10 months of 2018 came from the US, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Japan, United Kingdom, Qatar, Canada, Germany and Hong Kong.