OFW remittances up 8.5 percent in October

MANILA, Philippines - Money sent home by Filipinos abroad hit a fresh monthly record high in October, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported yesterday.

Cash remittances coursed through banks amounted to $1.928 billion, up 8.5 percent from the previous year, preliminary data showed. The latest figure beat the previous high of $1.838 billion posted last September.

For the first 10 months, cash remittances already reached $17.499 billion, an improvement of 5.8 percent year-on-year. BSP has a five-percent remittance growth outlook for this year and the next.

Meanwhile, personal remittances, including hand-carry money transfers, also reached a record-high of $2.137 billion in October, up 8.2 percent. So far, these transfers have grown 5.9 percent to $19.461 billion.

“Remittances remained strong despite fragile economic conditions in advanced economies and renewed geopolitical tensions in some parts of the Middle East,” BSP Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. said in a statement.

“Remittance flows were supported by the steady deployment of skilled and professional Filipino manpower abroad, combined with commercial banks’ continued efforts to build up their network of remittance business partners worldwide,” he explained.

Data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration included in the statement showed a total of 302,173 job orders processed in the first 11 months of the year. Most of the workers were deployed to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Qatar.

Saudi Arabia and UAE were also among the main sources of cash remittances during the period, Tetangco said, together with the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Japan and Singapore. These countries accounted for 78.2 percent of the total, Tetangco added.