OFW remittances up 6.3% in April

The inflow of remittances from overseas Filipinos coursed through banks reached $1.6 billion in April, up by 6.3 percent year on year, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. said in statement the increase reflected improved inflows from both sea-based workers—which rose by 12.2 percent—and land-based workers, which went up by 4.4 percent.

April inflows brought the total in the first four months to $6.2 billion, or 6 percent higher than the $5.9 billion recorded in the same period of 2010.

From January to April, the major sources of remittances were the United States, Canada, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, United Arab Emirates and Italy.

“Remittance flows continued to draw support from the steady overseas demand for Filipino skills and expertise and the continuing efforts of banks and other financial institutions to extensively promote and improve upon the financial products and services they offer in the remittance market,” Tetangco said.

Citing preliminary data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), approved job orders for January-May totaled 269,386.

Of the total, about a third has already been processed while the rest have yet to be filled up.

Most of these are intended for deployment to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Further, the POEA said new rules have been issued to strengthen the temporary foreign workers’ program in Canada to protect foreign workers and maintain the Canadian government’s focus on alleviating temporary labor shortages.

Tetangco said another factor that helped shore up inflows was the fact that banks and other financial institutions have been actively introducing innovative remittance products such as adding a remittance feature to credit cards.

Such enterprises are “providing reliable services to enable overseas Filipinos to transfer money swiftly and securely to relatives back home,” he said.

“These initiatives are expected to encourage the use of the formal channels to capture a bigger share of the global remittance market.

Earlier this year, BSP cut its growth forecast for remittances this year to 7 percent from an original estimate of 8 percent.

However, remittance growth is seen to slow further to 5 percent next year.—With a report from Reuters