A recent survey commissioned by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed that overseas Filipino workers (OFW) and their families are beginning to save money.
According to Rosabel Guerrero, director of BSP’s Department of Economic Statistics, 44 percent of the OFW households it had interviewed for its Consumer Expectation Survey said they are saving their money. This is higher than the 41.4 percent during the first quarter and the 40.3 percent during the second quarter last year.
“OFW households seem to be richer these days because they are now saving,” Guerrero said.
According to recent spending patterns of OFWs and their households, the bulk of remittances is still spent on various items instead of it going into savings or investment. Almost all of the OFW families, or about 97.2 percent, said the remittances were spent on food, 69.4 percent said they spent the money on education, 59.6 percent on medical payments and 46.4 percent on debt payments.
Those who said the money was spent on appliances and furniture climbed to an all-time high of 34 percent, while those buying vehicles went up to 10.5 percent.
The respondents who said they are investing the remitted money increased to 6.8 percent from the previous quarter’s 5.7 percent.
“The utilization pattern of remittances was broadly similar in both NCR [National Capital Region] and outside of NCR,” Guerrero noted.
In the NCR, more respondents said they used the remittances to buy a house, while those outside of Metro Manila said they invested their money.
The consumer-confidence survey involved 5,700 respondents across the country, about 10 percent of whom were considered members of OFW households.
Meanwhile, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) marked Independence Day on Sunday with a job fair at the Rizal Park with 24,000 job openings.
Acting Labor Secretary Danilo Cruz said 113 employers participated in the department’s Kalayaan job fair that included business groups, such as Globe Telecom Inc., Sykes Asia, Asia Brewery, Banco de Oro and the Federated Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
Cruz said the job fair targeted thousands of job seekers that included fresh graduates and displaced OFWs. The job fair aims to provide “productive and matched job opportunities available in the local market,” he said.
To help college- and high-school students find the jobs that fit their competencies, the Labor department also conducted intensive career-guidance seminars in 1,164 venues nationwide.
Cruz said at a total of 213,480 students from tertiary schools, technical-vocational schools and high schools, along with their parents, attended the career guidance seminars aimed at encouraging Filipinos to work in the country.
The career-guidance seminars seek to enable students to “make informed decisions about their career choices,” Cruz said.
“Eventually, our goal is to make the best talents stay by reducing labor-job mismatch in the country, and through better labor-market information, the intensified career guidance seminars would help ensure that students are prepared for effective careers prior to their graduation,” Cruz said. --VG Cabuag, Estrella Torres
IN PHOTO -- JOB seekers look for vacancies at the Independence Day job fair held by the Department of Labor and Employment and the private sector at Rizal Park in Manila on Sunday. --NONIE REYES
