Cash remittances by Filipino migrant workers hardly moved in March this year after accelerating to an eight-month high the previous month.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported on Monday remittances grew 1.5 percent in March, when cash inflows for the month reached $2.425 billion.
This is the slowest movement in remittances since September last year when growth slowed to 1.3 percent at $2.2 billion. The March growth figure is slower than the 9.1 percent posted in February, or the 15.9-percent growth seen in March 2015.
The March inflow brought total first-quarter remittances to $6.56 billion, still up by 4.4 percent, from the $6.282 billion in the same period last year.
The BSP said the demand for Filipino workers abroad continues to keep the dollar inflows amid stormy waters in the global economy.
“The steady deployment of overseas Filipino workers remained a key driver to the growth of remittance inflows,” the BSP said, citing preliminary reports from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration indicating processed contract reaching 2.3 million in 2015, 1.2 million of which were deployed.
The BSP said more than three-fourths of cash remittances came from the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Japan, Qatar and Kuwait.