Remittances continue muted growth

Dollars sent home by expatriate Filipinos continued to exhibit relatively muted growth for the first 10 months of the year and for October alone, compared to levels recorded during the same periods last year, data from the central bank revealed on Monday.

According to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, personal remittances from Filipinos working or residing overseas from January to October this year reached $26.5 billion, equivalent to a 2.9-percent year-on-year growth. This was slower than the 5.2-percent growth recorded in the same period of 2017.

For October alone, personal remittances totaled $2.8 billion, higher by 8 percent from $2.6 billion a year ago, but with the growth rate coming in lower than the 9.7 percent reported for that same month in 2017.

In a statement, BSP Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr. said personal remittances from land-based overseas Filipinos with work contracts of a year or more posted an increase of 2.8 percent (at $20.3 billion), while those from sea-based and land-based workers with work contracts of less than a year increased by 4.2 percent (at $5.5 billion) for the January-to-October period.

Likewise, for the first 10 months of 2018, cash remittances coursed through banks reached $23.8 billion, or a 3.1-percent increase compared to the $23.1 billion registered in the same period in 2017.

In October 2018, cash remittances from overseas Filipinos sent through banks grew by 8.7 percent year-on-year to $2.5 billion.

The top countries that contributed to the increase were the United States, Canada and Taiwan. Cash remittances from both land- ($18.7 billion) and sea-based ($5.0 billion) workers grew by 2.8 percent and 4.2 percent year-on-year, respectively.

By country source, 79 percent of the total cash remittances for the first 10 months of 2018 came from the US, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Japan, United Kingdom, Qatar, Canada, Germany and Hong Kong.

Personal remittances represent the sum of net compensation of employees, personal transfers and capital transfers between households. Cash remittances, on the other hand, represent only the wages of expatriate Filipinos that they send back to local beneficiaries.

Net compensation refers to gross earnings of overseas Filipino workers with work contracts of less than a year, including all sea-based workers, less taxes, social contributions, and transportation and travel expenditures in their host countries.

Personal transfers refer to all current transfers in cash or in kind by overseas Filipino workers with work contracts of a year or more as well as other household-to-household transfers between Filipinos who have migrated abroad and their families in the Philippines.

Capital transfers between households refer to the provision of resources for capital purposes such as for the construction of residential houses, between resident and non-resident households without anything of economic value being supplied in return.