OFW remittances surge 17% in September

Remittances from Filipinos living abroad reached $1.3 billion in September this year, bringing the cumulative total for the first nine months to $12.3 billion.

Data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pili-pinas (BSP) revealed that the September remittances from overseas Filipinos increased by 16.9 percent and for the nine-month period, the increases was recorded at 17.1 percent.

Last year, the BSP said overseas Filipinos sent a total of $1.139 billion in September and the cumulative total was recorded at $10.477 billion in January to September 2007.

“Robust remittance flows have been shored up by strong overseas demand for Filipino skills,” said BSP governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. He said these inflows have remained the source of strength for the economy amid problematic external environment.

The BSP recorded a decline in remittances in August but the BSP said this was caused by the cautionary stance that overseas Filipinos took as world financial markets reeled from the effects of high oil prices, high inflation and the beginnings of the financial meltdown in the US.

In September and the remaining months of the year, remittances are expected to continue rising especially towards the holiday season when inflows from OFs peak annually.

The actual number of deployed workers has breached the 1-million mark, the BSP said, quoting figures from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA).

Based on preliminary data from the POEA, the BSP said that for the first nine months of 2008, the number of Filipinos deployed abroad reached 1,005,767.

Tetangco said this represents a 25.9 percent increase from the level recorded in 2007 when the country deployed a total of 798,731 workers to work abroad.

The BSP said newly-hired Filipinos were mostly deployed to the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait) and Asia (Taiwan and Hong Kong) — areas that were deemed to be largely insulated from the meltdown in the US.

For the period January-September, remittances came largely from the US, Saudi Arabia, U.K., Italy, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.

The Arroyo administration has been bitterly criticized for failing to generate the kind of jobs that would encourage highly-skilled workers to stay in the country but the government instead embarked on aggressive promotions campaign to train workers for jobs abroad.

The BSP said there were “employment opportunities in selected destinations” such as Canada and some other Middle Eastern countries. It also said there were “enhanced collaboration with potential employers” to facilitate skills certification and training programs to sustain the demand for Filipino workers abroad.