WB: PH among top remittance recipients
THE Philippines was one of the top five recipients of remittances last year, a report released by the World Bank said.
The World Bank’s latest Migration and Development Brief showed that in current US dollar terms, the top five recipient countries last year were India, China, Mexico, the Philippines and Egypt.
“Defying earlier predictions of shrinking flows due to the pandemic, remittances to the Philippines fell by 0.7 percent in 2020,” the World Bank said.
“A key factor behind this resilience was the growth (by 5.5 percent) of inflows from the United States, by far the largest source of remittances to the Philippines (almost 40 percent in 2020),” it added.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) earlier reported that remittances from overseas Filipino workers reached $33.19 billion last year, down from the $33.46 billion in 2019.
“The major source of remittances to the Philippines in 2020 was the United States (40 percent), followed by Singapore (7.2 percent), Saudi Arabia (6.1 percent), Japan (5.3 percent), the United Kingdom (4.6 percent) and the United Arab Emirates (4.3 percent),” said the World Bank.
The report said that for all lowand middle-income countries, remittance flows remained resilient last year despite the pandemic.
Officially recorded remittance flows for these countries reached $540 billion in 2020, down by 1.6 percent from the 2019 total of $548 billion.
According to the World Bank, the recorded decline was significantly smaller than the -4.8 percent seen during the 2009 global financial crisis.
It noted that main drivers for the steady flow included fiscal stimulus that resulted in betterthan-expected economic conditions in host countries, a shift in flows from cash to digital and from informal to formal channels, and cyclical movements in oil prices and currency exchange rates.
“As Covid-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) still devastates families around the world, remittances continue to provide a critical lifeline for the poor and vulnerable,” said World Bank Global Director of the Social Protection and Jobs
together with national social protection systems, should continue to be inclusive of all communities, including migrants,” Rutkowski added.
With growth expected to rebound in 2021 and 2022, the
World Bank said remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries are expected to increase by 2.6 percent to $553 billion in 2021 and by 2.2 percent to $565 billion in 2022.