Personal remittances from overseas Filipinos (OFs) amounted to US$2.6 billion in July 2017, posting an 8.7 percent increase year-on-year, data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed.
On a cumulative basis, personal remittances from OFs for the period January-July 2017 rose by 5.9 percent to reach US$17.9 billion, BSP Officer-in-Charge Diwa C. Guinigundo announced today.
The steady growth in personal remittances drew support from the remittance inflows from land-based OF workers with work contracts of one year or more, amounting to US$13.8 billion, and compensation of sea-based workers and land-based workers with short-term contracts (excluding their expenditures abroad), which reached US$3.6 billion.
Similarly, cash remittances from OFs coursed through banks, aggregating US$2.3 billion in July 2017, were higher by 7.1 percent than the level recorded in the same month last year.
Cash remittances from land-based workers (at US$1.8 billion) and from sea-based workers (at US$0.5 billion), posted 6.8 percent and 8.4 percent growth, respectively, compared to the levels reported a year ago.
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By country source, the primary contributors to the growth in cash remittances during the month are the United States (with 3.3 percentage points contribution to growth), United Arab Emirates (UAE) (1.1 percentage points), Singapore (0.8 percentage point), and Japan (0.6 percentage point).
On a year-to-date basis, overseas remittances posted 5.0 percent growth, reaching US$16.1 billion in January to July 2017.
Cash remittances from both land-based and sea-based workers summed up to US$12.8 billion and US$3.3 billion, respectively.
Cash remittances coming from the United States, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Singapore, Japan, United Kingdom, Qatar, Kuwait, Germany and Hong Kong comprised about 80 percent of total cash remittances in the first seven months of 2017.2
The sustained increase in overseas remittances was supported by stable demand for skilled Filipino workers abroad.
Preliminary data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) showed that for the period January-July 2017, the total number of deployed OF workers reached 1,222,003 which is about 58 percent of the total number of OF workers deployed for the year 2016 at 2,112,331. – BusinessNewsAsia.com