The foreign-currency earnings sent home by overseas Filipinos bucked the seasonal slack in January, when this grew faster than it did at the height of the Christmas season, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported on Wednesday.
In particular, cash remittances coursed through banks in January this year grew 8.6 percent from the same month last year, totaling $2.17 billion.
This represented an acceleration from the 3.6-percent expansion reported the previous December.
In terms of remittance source, the money sent home by land-based workers amounted to $1.8 billion, 13.5 percent higher compared to the same month a year ago.
However, sea-based workers’ remittances declined by 8.3 percent year-on-year.
The BSP attributed the decline to the stiffer competition in the supply of seafarers. So-called manning agency literature indicates that while senior ship officers are typically European, the junior officers are often Filipinos.
By country source, the bulk of cash remittances came from the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Qatar, Kuwait, Hong Kong and Australia.
The BSP said the combined remittance from these countries accounted for more than 79 percent of total cash sent back to the Philippines.
Remittances from the United States grew by 9.2 percent, contributing 3 percentage points to the 8.6 percent overall growth.
Those from Singapore, Qatar and Japan rose by 19.7 percent, 57.8 percent and 16 percent, respectively, with a combined 3.8 percentage points contribution to total growth in cash remittances.
The BSP earlier announced it expects remittances to grow by 4 percent this year. As a share of GDP, remittances accounted for about 10 percent of the country’s local output or the gross domestic product in 2016.