Moody’s: RP vulnerable if OFW transfers dry up

The country is vulnerable to a financial shock if cash remittances by masses of Filipinos working abroad dry up due to the global crisis, investment analyst group Moody’s warned yesterday.

“If overseas worker remittances decline due to a global recession, the buffer to external financial market pressures, as provided by the current account surplus, could be eliminated,” said Tom Byrne, a Moody’s senior vice president.

“In the current environment, the challenge for the authorities is to attempt to minimise the damage from the global credit contraction and recession,” he added, in a Moody’s statement issued in Singapore.

For years, the vast army of overseas workers has kept the Philippine economy afloat with their remittances. In 2007 they sent home $14.4 billion, equivalent to 10 percent of gross domestic product.

These remittances have helped build up the country’s foreign exchange reserves, which the central bank yesterday said rose to a record $37.1 billion as of end-2008.

The government is projecting remittances to exceed $15 billion in 2008, but has said the crisis could make the figure difficult to achieve.

The government said yesterday that 2,500 of about 90,000 Filipinos in Taiwan lost their jobs there last year, and about the same number are also expected to return home unemployed from that country this year.