Workers’ remittances defy global slowdown, up by 3%

FILIPINO workers sent home a record $1.5 billion in March, up 3.1 percent from a year ago, as demand for overseas labor remained steady despite the global economic crisis, the central bank said yesterday.

Nearly 10 percent of the country’s 90 million people work abroad—many as nurses, maids, engineers, construction workers and seafarers.

For the first quarter, remittances grew 2.7 percent to $4.1 billion.

The World Bank has projected a 4-percent drop in Filipinos’ remittances this year as a result of the global downturn, but the central bank says demand for labor remains strong.

Bangko Sentral Governor Amando Tetangco said a bank study showed continued demand for Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia— the most popular destination for Filipino labor for the last four decades—as the kingdom gears up for construction of megacities.

“These developments provide continued optimism for stability in remittances, notwithstanding the displacement of some [workers] as a result of the global economic crisis,” Tetangco said.

Last year, Filipinos overseas sent home $16.4 billion, or 10.4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, fueling domestic consumption that is a linchpin of the economy.

The number of workers who left the Philippines in the first two months rose 27.3 percent from a year ago, the central bank said.

The markets that had not been severely affected by the crisis also had job needs, while the recently signed labor accords were expected to improve job prospects for Filipinos in Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Qatar, the bank said.

Apart from the Middle East, many Filipinos work in the US and Southeast Asia.

Remittances from Asia, mainly the Middle East, jumped 14.32 percent in the first quarter to $520.4 million, more than making up for a 0.31-percent decline in remittances from North and South America.

Remittances from Canada rose 67.3 percent to $408.14 million, but those from the United States fell 9.13 percent to $1.687 billion from $1.84 billion.

Remittances from Australia rose 5.07 percent to $32.8 million, as did those from New Zealand, which jumped 40 percent to $2.3 million.

Remittances from Europe rose 3.74 percent to $757.8 million despite a 13.8-percent drop in remittances from the United Kingdom. Eileen A. Mencias, AP, Bloomberg