Money earned overseas and sent home by migrant Filipino workers continued to provide fresh fuel for the economy, the group having sent the highest volume of remittance in any single month thus far this year, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said on Monday.
Latest data from the central bank show cash remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) totaling $2.11 billion in September. This was the largest monthly remittance figure for 2014.
The September remittances stood 7.9 percent higher than cash remittances of only $1.95 billion sent in the same month last year.
The remittances also brought the total cash sent home by migrant Filipino workers to $17.65 billion in the first nine months of the year.
This was 6.1 percent more than cash remittances of only $16.64 billion in the same nine-month period last year.
The steadily increasing stream of remittances was attributed to sustained demand for skilled Filipino manpower overseas—both in land-based and sea-based labor.
In the January-to-September period, cash remittances from land-based workers grew by 5.4 percent to $13.5 billion. Meanwhile, sea-based workers sent home $4.2 billion worth of remittances during the same period, expanding by 8.3 percent from last year.
About 80 percent of the total remittances during the month came from the US, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the UK, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and Canada, according to the central bank.
The central bank also attributed the remittance flows to the increasing number of remittance channels established by bank and non-bank institutions around the world.
“As of end-September 2014, the number of commercial banks’ established tie-ups, remittance centers, correspondent banks and branches or representative offices abroad totaled 4,587, 4 percent higher than the level as of end-September 2013,” the central bank said.
The central bank also cited preliminary reports from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration showing 680,392 job orders for the January-to-September period. About half of the job orders were for service, production and professional, technical and related workers in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar.
Meanwhile, personal remittances, which account for both monetary and material transfers, amounted to $2.3 billion in September, rising by 8.1 percent from the comparable month last year.
The remittances were highest at $2.154 billion in December last year, when it helped fuel consumption activities that also helped drive the economy forward at an annual rate of 7.2 percent in terms of the gross domestic product during the period.
About a third of the $270-billion Southeast Asian economy is consumption-driven.