Remittances rise 5.5% to $1.9 billion in April

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said personal remittances from overseas Filipinos (OFs) amounted to $1.9 billion in April 2012, rising by 5.5 percent year-on-year.

According to the BSP, for the four-month period in 2012, personal remittances increased by 5.6 percent relative to the same period a year ago to reach $7.3 billion.

The BSP said about three-fourths (74.7 percent) of the aggregate amount of personal remittances in January-April 2012 consisted of transfers from OF workers with work contracts of one year or more while nearly a fourth (23 percent) came from sea-based workers and land-based OF workers with short-term contracts.

Meanwhile, cash remittances from OFs coursed through banks reached $1.7 billion in April 2012, higher by 5.3 percent compared to the level recorded in the same period last year.

This brought the cumulative remittance level for the four-month period to $6.5 billion.

The 5.4 percent year-on-year increase in fund transfers in 2012 was supported by higher remittances from both sea-based ($1.5 billion) and land-based ($5 billion) workers which grew by 14.6 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively.

Remittance flows were sustained by the steady demand for Filipino workers abroad as well as the expanded access of overseas Filipinos and their beneficiaries to a diverse and innovative range of financial products and services offered by banks and other financial institutions. Preliminary data obtained from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) indicated that workers classified as new hires with processed contracts and are awaiting deployment rose by 16.5 percent to 85,009 for the period January-February 2012 from 72,941 in the same period last year.

Meanwhile, for the first five months of the year, approved job orders aggregated 334,945, of which about a third or 100,848 consisted of processed job orders for service, professional, technical and production and related workers which are intended for deployment in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Increased inflows of overseas Filipinos’ cash remittances were also made possible by the continued expansion of banks’ presence across the globe through tie-ups established by local financial institutions with foreign and local money transfer operators, mobile phone service operators and pawnshops.

To date, there are about 4,732 bank branches, correspondent banks, remittance centers, tie-ups/agents providing remittance services compared to 4,575 entities in the same period last year.

The top 10 country sources of cash remittances passing through formal channels were the USA, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the UK, UAE, Singapore, Italy, Germany and Hong Kong. –Aileen Lor, Daily Tribune