Filipino sailors on Greek ships will be fine – TUCP

MANILA – Filipino sailors on dollar-earning Greek ships will be fine, relatively unaffected by the crisis in Greece, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) said in a news release Sunday.

“We are counting on Greek trading ships, which are earning quite a lot in US dollars, to stay afloat. They are fairly insulated from the Greek government’s extreme financial distress,” said former Senator and TUCP president Ernesto Herrera, a key founder of the Philippine Seafarers’ Union.

Most of the 53,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Greece are sailors on merchant ships operating out of Athens, he said.

Herrera said the Greek merchant fleet is a vital cog of global trade. Greek companies run 16 percent of the world’s ocean-going trading vessels.

Greece is the Philippines’ fifth-largest source of dollar remittances from sailors, after the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan, according to Herrera, former chairman of the Senate committee on labor, employment and human resources development.

Remittances

The former senator said OFWs in Greece remitted a total of $335.45 million to their families in the Philippines in 2014, and 87 percent of the cash came from sailors.

He said OFWs in Greece sent home another $105.43 million from January to April this year, and 88 percent of the money came from sailors.

Citing Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas statistics, Herrera said sailors now generate 25 cents out of every dollar that the Philippines receives by wire from an OFW.

Filipino sailors around the world sent home a record-high $5.755 billion in 2014, up $540 million, or 10.3 percent, from $5.215 billion in 2013.

From January to April this year, they wired home a total of $1.916 billion, up $102 million, or 5.6 percent, from $1.814 billion over the same four-month period in 2014.

The Greek government, which owes foreign creditors some $359 billion, failed to make a $1.73-billion loan repayment to the International Monetary Fund that was due June 30.

The Greeks are set to vote Sunday in a referendum whether to accept or reject harsh austerity measures demanded by foreign creditors in return for fresh bailout loans.