Remittances from Filipinos abroad reached US$ 1.69 billion year-on-year in May this year, up 6.9 percent from US$ 1.58 billion last year, the second highest monthly volume since last December.
Data released by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) on Friday show remittances last May brought the five-month total to US$ 7.9 billion, 6.2 percent higher than year-ago’s US$ 7.4 billion.
Quoting the central bank statement, BSP Deputy Governor Diwa Guinigundo told reporters that money being sent home both by land-based and sea-based Filipinos abroad continued to grow.
Inflows from sea-based workers expanded by 21.4 percent year-on-year while those from land-based workers rose by 3.6 percent.
Bulk of the money came from the U.S., Canada, Saudi Arabia, U.K., Japan, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Italy, and Germany, Guinigundo said.
Citing reports from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), Guinigundo said strong demand for Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) as well as their continued deployment countered the impact of the on-going political unrest in countries in the Middle East and North African (MENA) as well as the natural disaster in Japan.
Total deployed OFW last year reached 1.47 million, a 3.4 percent jump from year-ago’s 1.42 million.
Bulk of these workers, or 76.4 percent, are land-based workers while the balance accounts for sea-based workers.
From Jan. 1 to June 30 this year, approved job orders totaled to 330,498, of which 33.3 percent amounting to 111,018 were already processed while 220,480 were still to be filled up.
“These job orders were intended for the manpower requirements in UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Taiwan and Hong Kong, among other countries for production, service, professional, technical and other related workers,” Guinigundo said.
The central bank official said another factor to the continued rise in remittance inflows was the “growing presence of bank and non-bank money transfer channels both locally and internationally as well as the expanding variety of products and services offered by the remittance networks.”
Guinigundo reiterated that the Saudization program would have minimal effect on the existing and future OFW deployment in Saudi Arabia.
“ Large Saudi companies are already eighty percent compliant with the Saudization program. Only OFs who are employed by small establishments will likely be most affected, as they have largely been non-compliant with the program to-date,” he said.
Guinigundo said that the government continued to look for opportunities for displaced workers in a bid to support members of this sector. [PNA]
