Remittances hit $2B in August

Monday, October 15, 2012
REMITTANCES from overseas Filipinos continued to rise in August, posting a growth of almost eight percent from the year-ago level to reach US$2 billion, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Officer-in-Charge Juan D. De Zuñiga, Jr. announced yesterday.
This brought total remittances from January to August to US$15.3 billion, 5.6 percent higher than figures during the same period in 2011.
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Growth in remittances was sustained by higher personal transfers from land-based overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) with work contracts of one year or more (by 3.3 percent), as well as sea-based workers and land-based workers with short-term contracts (by 13.3 percent).
Cash remittances from overseas Filipinos, coursed through banks, also expanded by 5.5 percent to reach US$13.7 billion for the first eight months of this year over 2011.
The steady influx of remittances was observed from both sea-based (US$3.2 billion) and land-based workers (US$10.5 billion).
More than 43 percent of the remittances came from the United States, while 9.5 percent come from Canada,7.7 percent from Saudi Arabia, 4.9 percent from the United Kingdom, Japan (4.9 percent), the United Arab Emirates (4.2 percent), and Singapore (4 percent).
Demand
Preliminary reports by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) indicated continued demand for skilled Filipino workers.
For the period January-September 2012, a total of 231,316 job orders—mostly for service, production, and professional, technical and related workers—were processed in response to the manpower requirements in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Taiwan.
The POEA also reported that workers with processed contracts and those awaiting deployment reached 1,081,513 for the first semester of 2012. This was lower by 35 percent than the level recorded in the same period last year, however.
With expectations of sustained demand for skilled Filipino workers overseas, remittances are projected to continue to boost economic activity and provide a steady supply of foreign exchange.
The increasing use of financial channels for transfers and the continued introduction of innovations in remittance products are expected to contribute to the steady flow of remittances into the country, the central bank said. (PR)

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