OFW inflows up 6.6% to $5.9 billion in January-April

MANILA, Philippines – Money sent home by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) grew by 6.6 percent to $5.86 billion in the first four months of the year from $5.49 billion a year ago, due to a steady demand for professional and skilled Filipino workers abroad.

BSP Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. said that remittances from OFWs were propped up by the steady demand for Filipino workers abroad and the expansion of bank and non-bank service providers to capture a larger share of the global remittance market.

“Notwithstanding concerns over sovereign debt problems in some European countries, remittan-ces from overseas Filipinos continued to show strength amidst the gradual recovery of the global economy,” Tetangco said.

He pointed out that the bulk, or 81.4 percent, of the total remittances reported by local banks in the first four months were sourced mainly from the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, and Italy.

Data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) showed that workers classified as new hires with processed contracts and are awaiting deployment rose by 11 percent to 137, 888 in the first four months of the year from 124,170 in the same period last year.

Furthermore, approved job orders aggregated 295,373 for the first five months of the year. About a third of the approved job orders were involved in service, professional, technical as well as production and related workers.

Tetangco said the enforcement of the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement in January this year is also expected to open up more job opportunities for Filipino nurses and engineers.

For the month of April alone, the BSP chief said OFW remittances grew   by 5.4 percent to $1.52 billion from $1.441 billion in the same month last year.

This was the third highest ever monthly remittance level after the $1.567 billion posted last December and the $1.553 billion posted in March.

He also cited the expanded access of overseas Filipinos and their beneficiaries to an increasing range of financial products and services offered by banks and other financial institutions.

Statistics showed that the number of established tie-ups, remittance centers, correspondent banks, branches or representative offices abroad of commercial banks increase to 4,483 as of March this year from 4,192 as of end-2009.

The BSP has upgraded its growth forecast for the amount of money sent home by overseas Filipinos to eight percent instead of six percent due to the strong demand for Filipino skilled workers.

Last year, remittances went up by 5.4 percent to a new record level of $17.348 billion last year from $16.426 billion and exceeded the revised four percent growth forecast set by the central bank due to the steady growth of OFW remittances to the sustained demand for skilled Filipino workers overseas particularly engineers, medical practitioners, and teachers.

Major sources of remittances last year included the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Italy, and Germany.

The Philippines posted a stronger-than-expected gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 7.3 percent in the first quarter of the year from only 0.5 percent in the same quarter last year. This was higher than the 2.9 percent to 3.9 percent GDP growth projected by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) for the first quarter.

The economic managers through the Cabinet-level Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) is looking at revising upwards its GDP growth forecast to five percent to six percent instead of the original 2.6 percent to 3.6 percent this year. –Lawrence Agcaoili (The Philippine Star)