Remittances keep rising

 

Wednesday, August 15, 2012
A RISING number of Filipinos going abroad to work raised personal remittances to US$2 billion in June 2012, an increase of 4.2 percent from what was sent in June last year.
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Gov. Amando M. Tetangco Jr. announced remittances for the first half of the year reached US$11.3 billion, higher by 5.3 percent than in the same period in 2011.

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Despite continuing concerns over the state of the American and Eurozone economies, land-based overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) with work contracts of one year or more sent home 2.7 percent more in remittances, compared to June last year.
“Another factor that helped shore up remittances was the continued expansion of bank and non-bank remittance providers that enabled the wider capture of a larger share of the global remittance market,” the BSP said.
Eurozone
Cash remittances coursed through banks totaled US$10.1 billion in the first half of 2012, which was 5.1 percent than in the same months last year.
Remittances increased from the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, and Hong Kong.
Those from most countries in the euro area (Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal, among others) dropped, but remittances still increased in some countries in the non-euro area, notably the United Kingdom.
Where are they?
Nearly half of the total remittances were sent from the United States (42.8 percent).
The other top sources were Canada (9.6 percent), Saudi Arabia (7.6 percent), Japan (5.0 percent), the United Kingdom (4.8 percent), Singapore (4.2 percent), and the United Arab Emirates (4.1 percent).
The BSP said the key reason for the increase in remittance flows to the Philippines was the sustained growth in the deployment of overseas workers.
Preliminary data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) revealed that for January-December 2011, the number of workers deployed overseas increased by 14.8 percent to 1,687,831, from 1,470,826 in the same period a year ago.
More than 25 percent of the land-based workers were new hires. Land-based workers, at 1,318,727, accounted for almost 80 percent of the total number of deployed OFWs.
Data from the POEA also showed that in January-July 2012, approved job orders totaled 472,261, and the top destinations were Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Taiwan.

Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on August 16, 2012.