The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) records a slight increase in the amount of dollar remittances from Filipinos abroad in January 2019, as compared to the same period last year.
BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno said that personal remittances posted a 3.4 percent increase—from $2.66 billion in January 2018 to $2.75 billion in January of this year.
The said growth is attributable to the increased volume of remittances from both land- and sea-based overseas workers, according to the BSP.
A 2.3 percent growth was also recorded in the amount of personal remittances from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more. For this year, they were able to send $2.12 billion while their last year’s remittances amounted only to $2.07 billion.
Meanwhile, overseas land- and sea-based Filipino workers with work contract of less than one year sent home $0.58 billion, a 12.6 percent increase from last years $0.52 billion.
A total of $2.38 billion worth of remittances were coursed through banks. This amount includes only wages sent home by expat Filipinos and increased by 4.4 percent, as compared to last year’s $2.38 billion.
From this amount, $1.95 billion came from land-based OFWs while $0.53 billion were sent by sea-based OFWs.
Dollar remittances from around the globe
Filipinos from the United States registered the highest share of overall remittances at 35.5 percent. On the other hand, the rest of the remittances came from Filipinos in other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Japan, Canada, Qatar, Hong Kong, and Kuwait, among others.
For the entire 2018, dollar remittances amounted to $32.3 billion, posting an annual growth of only 3 percent from 2017’s $31.2 billion worth of remittances. This growth rate, by far, has been the weakest in the last four years.
Accounting for almost 10 percent of the country’s domestic economic consumption, dollar remittances from Filipinos overseas has been a key growth pillar for the Philippines.
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