Remittances continued tepid growth in Nov ’18

Dollars sent home by expatriate Filipinos increased only slightly in November last year, thus maintaining a shallow growth trajectory that has been playing out since the first quarter of 2018, data from the central bank showed.

According to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, personal remittances from overseas Filipinos in November 2018 grew by 2.4 percent year-on-year to $2.6 billion.

On a cumulative basis, personal remittances in January-November 2018 reached $29.1 billion, or just 2.9-percent higher than the level posted a year ago, BSP officer-in-charge Maria Almasara Cyd Tuaño-Amador said on Tuesday.

The growth in personal remittances during the 11-month period was supported by remittance inflows from land-based overseas Filipinos with work contracts of one year or more, as well as remittances from sea- and land-based workers with contracts of less than one year, which increased by 2.8 percent and 4 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, cash remittances rose by 2.8 percent year-on-year to $2.3 billion in November 2018.

The central bank said the countries that contributed most to the increase for the month were Canada and the United States.

For the first eleven months of 2018, cash remittances reached $26.1 billion, or a 3.1-percent increase compared to the $25.3 billion registered in the same period in 2017. Cash remittances from both land-based ($20.5 billion) and sea-based workers ($5.5 billion) recorded increases of 2.8 percent and 4.1 percent, respectively.

The bulk of cash remittances during the period came from the US, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Japan, United Kingdom, Qatar, Canada, Germany and Hong Kong. Cash remittances from these countries accounted for almost 79 percent of total cash remittances.