Remittances 2.4% higher in November
Credit to Author: MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO, TMT| Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2019 16:22:29 +0000
Money sent home by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in November rose from a year earlier but dropped from the previous month, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported on Tuesday.
Personal remittances, which sum up the net compensation of OFWs, personal transfers whether in cash or in kind and also capital transfers between households, totaled $2.586 billion.
The result — up 2.4 percent from the $2.526 billion posted a year ago but 6.2 percent lower from October’s $2.757 billion — took year-to-date remittances to $29.057 billion, a 2.9-percent increase year on year.
“The growth in personal remittances during the first eleven months of 2018 was supported by remittance inflows from land-based OFs with work contracts of one year or more as well as remittances from sea-based and land-based OFs with work contracts of less than one year which increased by 2.8 percent and 4.0 percent, respectively,” BSP officer-in-charge Maria Almasara Cyd Tuaño-Amador said in a statement.
Justino Calaycay Jr., Philstocks.ph senior research analyst, said “the lower sequential growth could have resulted from a higher base as remittances surged alongside the depreciation of the peso as it provided for a bigger spending budget on translation ahead of the Chirstmas season.”
Cash remittances, which only count money coursed through banks, rose by 2.8 percent to $2.326 billion in November from $2.262 billion a year earlier. It fell by 5.9 percent, meanwhile, from the $2.474 billion recorded in October 2018.
The BSP said countries such as Canada and the United States contributed to the increase.
Year to date, cash remittances grew by 3.1 percent to $26.094 billion from $25.318 billion last year and by 9.7 percent from the $23.768 billion as of October 2018.
By country source, more than 79 percent of total cash remittances came from the US, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Japan, United Kingdom, Qatar, Canada, Germany, and Hong Kong.
The central bank expects cash remittances to grow by 3 percent this year, lower than its initial forecast of 4 percent.
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