Oct. remittances slip 3% to $2.099B

Cash sent home by Filipinos working and living abroad declined 3 percent to $2.099 billion in October, as the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas noted that a number of currencies of top remittance sources in Europe weakened against the US dollar that month.

In a statement Thursday, BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. also blamed the lower remittance flows last October from $2.164 billion in the same month last year to a drop in remittances from sea-based overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).

BSP data showed that the cash remittances that month were the lowest since February’s $2.098 billion while also reversing the two preceding months’ year-on-year increase.

Tetangco said cash sent back home by sea-based OFWs slid 11.1 percent year-on-year in October, outpacing the 0.6-percent decline in remittances of land-based employees.

“Stiffer competition in the supply of seafarers, particularly from East Asia and Eastern Europe, has contributed to the declining trend in sea-based remittances,” Tetangco explained.

Also, “the lower US dollar value of remittances in October may also be partly due to the depreciation of major host countries’ currencies vis-à-vis the US dollar, such as the [UK’s] pound sterling and the euro,” Tetangco added.

Citing BSP data, Tetangco said remittances from the United Kingdom slid 5.9 percent year-on-year last October despite a 16.5-percent increase in the volume of remittances in the original currency or the pound sterling.

But Tetangco said that in the case of Germany, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands, remittances in their original currencies as well as the US dollar equivalent both dropped that month.

According to Tetangco, the top countries that contributed to the drop in total cash remittances last October were Hong Kong, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

In October, four-fifths of total remittance flows came from Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States, BSP data showed.

For the January to October period, cash remittances grew 4 percent to $22.124 billion from $21.266 billion as of end-October last year. —BEN O. DE VERA