MANILA—Money sent home by Filipinos working abroad posted a stronger expansion in September 2011, data from the central bank showed.
According to data released by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, there is an expansion of remittances of 7.1 percent year-on-year to US$14.76 billion from January to September as against the previous month’s 6.9 percent growth.
BSP Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. said inflows for September alone grew by 8.4 percent to $1.74 billion, higher than the previous month’s $1.67 billion and last year’s $1.6 billion.
Remittances from both the land-based and sea-based workers rose during the period.
Money sent home by land based workers, which accounts for 78 percent of total remittances, went up by 5.3 percent to $11.6 billion while those from sea-based workers grew by 14.1 percent to $3.2 billion.
Some 85 percent of the inflows came from the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, UK, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Italy, Germany and Norway.
“OF (overseas Filipino) remittances continued to be an important contributor in solidifying the country’s economic fundamentals amidst the lingering global economic uncertainties, driven by prospects of sustained demand for Filipino workers abroad,” Tetangco said.
Citing Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) data, he said processed job orders for overseas workers forSaudi Arabia, UAE,Taiwan,Qatar,Kuwait, andHong Kongreached 223,172 as of October 31 this year, and this accounts for 40.7 percent of the total approved job orders.
Also, the number of land-based workers with processed contracts as of last August grew by 4.5 percent to 933,579 from last year’s 893,220 while the number of sea-based workers’ with processed contracts and awaiting deployment rose by 5.5 percent to 316,411 from 300,033.
“POEA’s data on job orders abroad provide support for a stable outlook on the growth of remittances in the last quarter of 2011,” the central bank said.
Tetangco also cited the wider remittance network of domestic banks as another factor to the robust growth of money sent home by overseas Filipinos through the formal channel.
As of September, the total number of bank branches, correspondent banks, remittance centers and tie-ups where overseas Filipino send their money rose by 6.7 percent to 4,688 as against year-ago’s 4,392. (Ofw Journalism Consortium)
