Construction activities for United Arab Emirates’s (UAE) hosting of the Fifa Club World Cup in 2017 and 2018 will help overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) secure jobs amid the effects of low oil prices in other OFW destinations.
National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) Assistant Director General Rosemarie G. Edillon told reporters that Filipinos who will lose jobs in oil-dependent economies like Saudi Arabia can seek employment in UAE.
Edillon said UAE’s preparations for its Fifa Club World Cup hosting, particularly construction activities, have caused a spike in demand for workers.
“On the upside, we’re seeing that the UAE will have additional demand because they will be hosting the World Cup, magkakaroon ng construction, so ’yung iba pwedeng maredeploy ’dun. The UAE is actually doing okay kasi it has a more diversified economy than Saudi Arabia,” Edillon added.
The Neda and other government agencies are currently monitoring the developments in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia, because of the impact on OFW jobs and remittances of the oil glut.
Edillon said a drop in remittances, among the country’s main sources of foreign exchange, would have little impact on the country’s dollar reserves.
She said the slack can be picked up by the business-process outsourcing (BPO) sector, which has also become an important source of jobs and dollar earnings for the Philippine economy in the past two decades. BPO earnings are also considered as the country’s services exports.
Dollar earnings, Edillon added, can also be brought in through merchandise exports. She said that, while Philippine merchandise export earnings have been slow in 2015, the recovery of the US and Japanese economies this year will cause merchandise export earnings to increase.
“But in terms of families, families that are relying on remittances, then that’s something else. We’re already doing the analysis, the DOLE [Department of Labor and Employment] has already asked for our help and we’re already crunching the numbers, because we will need to beef up the capacity of national reintegration,” Edillon said. “They have already some programs, but they will have to be scaled up.”
Economic Planning Secretary Emmanuel F. Esguerra earlier said that, as lower oil prices are seen to continue this year, the government must prepare for the possibility that some OFWs may be sent home.
Esguerra added that economies affected by low oil prices have implemented austerity measures, cut back on subsidies, postpone infrastructure outlays and raised taxes.
In order to support OFWs, he said the government should extend assistance to displaced workers, including retraining, livelihood, re-integration or placement services.
The low oil prices being experienced globally, Esguerra said, has already resulted in the slowdown of inflation in the country to 1.3 percent in January 2016, from 2.4 percent in January 2015.