Remittances up 8%, hit $2.76B in October
Credit to Author: MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO, TMT| Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2018 16:30:27 +0000
Money sent home by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in October rose from a year earlier and the previous 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 $2.757 billion.
The result — up 8.0 percent from the $2.552 billion posted a year ago and 10.7 percent higher from September’s $2.490 billion — took year-to-date remittances to $26.470 billion, a 2.9-percent increase year on year.
“Personal remittances from land-based OFs with work contracts of one year or more posted an increase of 2.8 percent (at $20.3 billion), while those from sea-based and land-based OFs with work contracts of less than one year increased by 4.2 percent (at $5.5 billion) for January to October of 2018,” Bangko Sentral Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr. said in a statement.
Emmanuel Leyco, associate professor at the Asian Institute of Management’s Department of Economics, said the latest figure was “welcome news as OFW remittances serve as a major backbone of the country’s economy.”
“I think this will continue as a trend in the next few months particularly during the holiday season,” he added.
Cash remittances, which only count money coursed through banks, rose by 8.7 percent to $2.474 billion in October from $2.275 billion a year earlier. It grew by 10.6 percent, meanwhile, from the $2.237 billion recorded in September 2018.
The BSP said countries such as United States, Canada, and Taiwan contributed to the increase.
Year to date, cash remittances grew by 3.1 percent to $23.768 billion from $23.056 billion last year and by 11.6 percent from the $21.294 billion as of September 2018.
By country source, more than 79 percent of total cash remittances came from the US, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Japan, the United Kingdom, Qatar, Canada, Germany, and Hong Kong.
The central bank expects cash remittances to grow by 3 percent this year, lower than its initial forecast of 4 percent.
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