MANILA, 20 September 2006 — Remittances from overseas Filipinos are expected to exceed the $11 billion mark this year as cash inflows from migrant workers for the first seven months of the year have reached $7 billion, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said.
A BSP news release said remittances have been averaging at $1 billion a month since March and this figure breached the $1 billion mark for the third consecutive month since May. Year-on-year growth of remittance flows in July 2006 were higher by 18.4 percent.
With the remittance figure pegged at $7.005 billion, it is expected that this will reach the 2006 target of $11.9 billion, especially since commercial banks and private remittance agents continue to provide more efficient remittance services to OFWs abroad and their beneficiaries.
The BSP Investor Relations Office (IRO) said the banks do this by offering better rates to clients, intensifying bank product endorsements, strengthening tie-ups with foreign money transfer agents and non-bank channels, and enhancing electronic banking services. However, the BSP said the 15.8 percent expansion during the seven-month period was attributed mainly to the combined impact of rising demand for Filipino workers and increased access to commercial banks and private remittance agents’ services.
Preliminary data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) on new hires and rehires showed that in July 2006, the total workers who left the country for jobs abroad grew by 43.1 percent to 102,105, boosted by higher demand for both sea-based and land-based OFWs.
Deployment of land-based workers, in particular, showed a significant improvement in July (55.4 percent), rebounding from consecutive declines since April.
Demand for sea-based workers continues to rise, posting double-digit growth of 12.8 percent during the month, BSP data showed. For the first seven months of the year, deployment totaled 661,360 or 5 percent compared to the level for the same period last year.
Of the cumulative seven-month total deployment, 162,533 (24.6 percent) are sea-based workers and 498,827 (75.4 percent) are land-based workers, growing by 14.4 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively, over the same period last year.
The continued government and private sector initiatives to enhance workers’ competence through skills upgrading, technical training and better education contributed largely to the increasing preference for the Philippines as a source of skilled labor.
Most overseas Filipinos’ remittances during the first seven months of the year continued to come from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Italy, United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, and United Arab Emirates. Further boosting the growth in remittances was the remarkable improvement in remittances from other countries such as Canada (190.7 percent), Taiwan (53.3 percent) and Singapore (22.7 percent).
