Remittances up 4.5%, hit $2.7B in July
MONEY sent home in July by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) rose from a year earlier and the prior month, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported on Monday.
Personal remittances, which sum up the net compensation of OFWs, personal transfers whether in cash or in kind and also capital transfers between households, totaled $2.675 billion.
The result — 4.5 percent up from the $2.559 billion posted a year ago and 2.2 percent higher from June’s $2.615 billion — took year-to-date remittances to $18.462 billion, a 3-percent increase year on year.
“The rise in personal remittances during the first seven months of 2018 was supported by an increase of 2.8 percent and 4.0 percent in remittance inflows from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more and sea-based workers and land-based workers with short-term contracts, respectively,” the Bangko Sentral said in a statement.
Cash remittances, which only count money sent home via banks, rose by 5.2 percent to $2.401 billion from $2.283 billion a year earlier.
The rise was attributed to 4.5-percent and 7.8-percent increases, respectively, in transfers from land- and sea-based workers.
The countries that registered the biggest contributions in cash remittances for July were the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Germany.
Year to date, cash remittances stood at $16.580 billion, up 3 percent from the comparable 2017 period.
“More than 79 percent of the total cash remittances came from the US, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Japan, UK, Qatar, Canada, Germany, and Hong Kong,” the central bank said.
Sought for comment, Land Bank of the Philippines market economist Guian Angelo Dumalagan told The Manila Times that a weaker peso supported remittances growth in July.
“A weaker peso is advantageous to OFWs as it increases the peso equivalent of every dollar sent,” he continued.
Dumalagan, however, noted that growth was now slower versus the historical average, primarily because of a slowdown in remittances from the Middle East.
“Such slowdown started a few years back when oil prices fell,” he explained.
The LandBank economist nevertheless said that growth in remittances remained healthy given strong demand for Filipino labor.
“The recovery in oil prices also improves job opportunities in oil-producing countries, brightening the outlook for remittances from the Middle East,” he said.
The post Remittances up 4.5%, hit $2.7B in July appeared first on The Manila Times Online.