OFW remittances hit 4-month low in June
MONEY sent home by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in June was the lowest in four months, a result the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said was partly due to a government repatriation program.
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 $2.615 billion for the month.
The result — 4.9 percent down from the $2.751 billion posted a year earlier and also lower by 4.7 percent from May’s $2.746 billion —was the lowest since the $2.528 billion posted in February this year.
It took year-to-date remittances to $15.798 billion, 2.8 percent higher year on year.
“Personal remittances from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more grew by 2.5 percent to $12.2 billion, while transfers from sea-based workers and land-based workers with short-term contracts likewise increased by 3.4 percent to $3.2 billion for the same period,” the Bangko Sentral said in a statement.
Cash remittances, which only count money sent home via banks, fell by 4.5 percent to $2.357 billion in June from $2.467 billion a year earlier.
The countries that registered the biggest declines in cash remittances for June were United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
“The Overseas Filipino Workers repatriation program of the government may have partly affected the remittance flows for the month,” the central bank explained.
It said that a total of 4,149 OFWs were repatriated from the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during the first two months of the year.
Citing preliminary data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, the BSP also noted that the number of deployed land-based workers dropped by 3.28 percent year-on-year, while that of the sea-based workers fell by 14.62 percent from last year.
Year to date, cash remittances stood at $14.179 billion, up 2.7 percent from the comparable 2017 period.
Broken down, cash remittances sent by land- and sea-based workers totalled $11.2 billion and $3 billion, respectively, 2.5 percent and 3.4 percent higher year on year.
For the six-month period, the bulk of cash remittances came from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United Kingdom, UAE, Japan, Qatar, Germany, Hong Kong and Canada, which combined accounted for almost 79 percent of total.
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