Remittances for first 8 mos. of 2012 rise 5.6% to $15.3B

Personal remittances sent by Filipinos abroad from January to August 2012 reached $15.3 billion.

The figure is a 5.6 percent increase compared to remittances recorded in the same period last year, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) acting chief deputy governor Juan de Zuñiga Jr. revealed.

For August alone, remittances reached $2 billion or 7.9 percent higher than same month in 2011.

The increase in remittances was triggered by money sent by land based workers with contracts of not less than a year (3.3 percent) and no more than six months (13.3 percent).

Cash remittances sent by Filipinos abroad rose by 5.5 percent to $3.7 billion for the first eight months of 2012 than in the same period last year, De Zuñiga said.
Land-based workers sent $10.5 billion of that amount while sea-based sent $3.2 billion.

Filipino workers in the United States and Canada are two top sources of the multibillion dollar remittances at 43.1 percent and 9.5 percent, respectively.

The other top sources of dollar remittances are Filipinos in Saudi Arabia, 7.7 percent; United Kingdom, 4.9 percent; Japan, 4.9 percent; United Arab Emirates, 4.2 percent; and Singapore, four percent.

According to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), there are 1,081,513 Filipinos who are ready to be deployed overseas but don’t have contracts yet.

Once this number of Filipinos is deployed abroad, the dollar remittances are expected to rise further.

However, the number of Filipinos set for deployment is lower by 35 percent than the number of those waiting for deployment in 2011. –Ed Velasco, Daily Tribune