Remittances increase 6.1% in July

Thursday, September 15, 2011By Katlene O. Cacho

REMITTANCES sent home by overseas Filipino workers increased by 6.1 percent to $1.7 billion in July, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) announced yesterday.

The BSP reported in its website that overseas remittances expanded by 6.3 percent to $11.4 billion, with remittances from land-based and sea-based workers growing by 4.3 percent and 14.1 percent respectively, in the first seven months of the year.

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“The steady inflow of fund transfers from overseas Filipinos despite the difficult conditions overseas could be explained partly by the sustained demand for Filipino manpower,” BSP said.

Data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) showed an increase of 19.5 percent in the number of processed job orders for August, bringing in a total of 162,574 jobs.

These processed job orders, POEA said, are expected to match the requirements for production, service, professional, technical and other related workers in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Taiwan, Qatar, Kuwait, and Hong Kong, among others.

For the first seven months this year, processed contracts of land-based workers awaiting to be deployed grew by 24.2 percent to 313,709 from 252,666 in the same period last year, while sea-based workers increased by 5.5 percent from 265,656 to 280,348 this year.

Major country sources of remittances include the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, UK, Japan, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Italy, and Germany. Total remittance flows from these countries accounted for 82.8 percent of total remittances reported by banks.

Meanwhile, BSP said the recent US credit rating downgrade by Standard & Poor’s, the protracted sovereign debt crisis in the Euro zone, and the social unrest in the Middle East and North Africa region are expected to have a modest impact on the remittance inflows for the rest of the year.

“The favorable remittance outlook is expected to be supported by the ongoing geographical diversification of deployment of Filipino workers and efforts by the government to redeploy displaced workers in crisis-affected countries,” the bank said.

The increasing use of financial channels for sending money is also seen as an important factor contributing to the continued flow of remittances.

BSP said banks continue to introduce innovations in their remittance products and expand their tie-ups abroad to reach out to a growing segment of overseas workers and their beneficiaries, including partnership with post offices servicing remittances.

Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on September 16, 2011.