OFW remittances down by only 0.8% last year

Contrary to the most pessimistic projections at the start of the pandemic, the country’s estimated 10 million expatriate Filipinos came through in 2020 to send home dollars that were only a fraction less than the level of the previous year.

The full-year 2020 personal remittances from overseas Filipinos reached $33.19 billion, lower by just 0.8 percent than the $33.47 billion recorded in the previous year.

This was in sharp contrast to bearish forecasts made last year by the likes of the World Bank, which had predicted a 13-percent decline in annual remittances because of the public health crisis. Local economists and market watchers had also forecast declines in the amount of dollars Filipino overseas workers would send home in the magnitude of 7-10 percent.

In a statement, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Benjamin Diokno said that “despite the global slump caused by the pandemic,” personal remittances from the country’s foreign-based citizens fell slightly by 0.3 percent year-on-year to $3.2 billion in December 2020 from $3.22 billion in December 2019.

According to the central bank, December 2020’s “slight decrease” was attributed to the 0.7-percent decline in remittances from land-based workers with work contracts of a year or more to $2.49 billion from $2.51 billion in December 2019.

Meanwhile, remittances from sea-based workers and land-based workers with work contracts of less than a year rose slightly by 0.8 percent to $647 million in December 2020 from $642 million in December 2019.

Nonetheless, personal remittances remained a major source of the country’s foreign exchange inflows, with the 2020 level representing 9.2 percent of the gross domestic product and 8.5 percent of the gross national income. INQ