Dollars sent home by overseas Filipinos maintain uptrend in May

Dollars sent home by Filipinos abroad continued to rise in May thanks mainly to those with long-term contracts as land-based workers and seafarers, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said on Monday.

In a press statement, the central bank said personal remittances from overseas Filipinos reached $2.7 billion in May 2018, representing a 6.1-percent increase over the level posted a year ago.

On a cumulative basis, personal remittances for the first five months of the year grew by 4.4 percent year-on-year to reach $13.2 billion, BSP Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr. announced.

Personal remittances during the period was driven by steady inflows from land-based overseas Filipino workers with work contracts of one year or more, which totaled to $10.2 billion, and compensation of sea-based workers and land-based workers with short-term contracts, which reached $2.7 billion.

Similarly, cash remittances from overseas Filipinos coursed through banks rose by 6.9 percent year-on-year to $2.5 billion in May 2018. In particular, cash remittances sent by land-based workers ($1.9 billion) and sea-based workers ($500 million) grew by 5.3 percent and 13.2 percent, respectively.

Of the 6.9 percent growth in May 2018, 2.6, 1.6 and 1.3 percentage points were contributed by the United States, United Kingdom and Singapore, respectively, the main drivers of the growth in cash remittances.

On a year-to-date basis, cash remittances registered a 4.2 percent increase to reach $11.8 billion.

Cash remittances coming from the US, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, UK, Japan, Qatar, Hong Kong, Germany and Kuwait accounted for about 78 percent of total cash remittances.

The BSP explained that personal remittances represent the sum of net compensation of employees (i.e. gross earnings of overseas Filipino workers with work contracts of less than one year, including sea-based workers, less taxes, social contributions, and transportation and travel expenditures in their host countries), personal transfers (i.e. all current transfers in cash or in kind by workers with work contracts of one year or more as well as other household-to-household transfers between Filipinos who have migrated abroad and their families in the Philippines), and capital transfers between households (i.e. the provision of resources for capital purposes, such as for construction of residential houses, between resident and non-resident households without anything of economic value being supplied in return). /je