Filipino overseas workers’ Jan-July dollars remittances hit $18.5B

The amount of dollars sent home by the country’s millions of overseas workers continued its unbroken uptrend in July due to an increase in remittances from Filipino workers deployed both at sea and their “land-based” counterparts, the central bank said Monday.

In a statement, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said that personal remittances from overseas Filipinos reached $2.7 billion in July 2018, higher by 4.5 percent compared to the level posted in the same month in 2017.

On a cumulative basis, personal remittances grew by 3 percent year-on-year to $18.5 billion in the January to July period, BSP Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr. said.

The rise in personal remittances during the first seven months of 2018 was supported by an increase of 2.8 percent and 4 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.

There are an estimated 10 million Filipinos working or residing overseas and the dollars they send to beneficiaries at home makes up a key supporting leg of the local economy. An estimated 10 percent of domestic economic activity is attributed directly or indirectly to these remittances, which totaled $31.2 billion in 2017, excluding funds sent home through informal channels.

According to the BSP, cash remittances from overseas Filipinos coursed through banks totaled $2.4 billion in July 2018, posting a 5.2 percent increase from the level recorded in the same month last year.

Cash remittances sent by land-based workers grew by 4.5 percent to $1.9 billion, while those from sea-based workers expanded by 7.8 percent to $511 million.

By country source, the primary contributors to the growth in cash remittances for the month were the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany.

For the first seven months of 2018, cash remittances climbed to $16.6 billion, a 3-percent increase from the level registered in the same period in 2017.

In particular, cash remittances from land-based and sea-based workers totaled $13.1 billion and $3.5 billion, respectively. More than 79 percent of the total cash remittances came from the US, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Japan, the UK, Qatar, Canada, Germany, and Hong Kong. /kga