The money sent home by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) continued to grow last November but at a rate the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas considers slow, the BSP said on Monday.
The cash remittances of millions of OFWs in the various workplaces around the world proved lower than the year’s average in November last year as this expanded by only 2 percent to $2.26 billion, from $2.22 reported in the same month last year.
The November cash-remittance tally was also lower than the $2.28 billion reported the previous month.
The BSP said top countries that contributed the most to the growth in cash remittances for the period were the United States and Germany, with 1.1-percentage point and 0.9-percentage point contribution, respectively.
Despite the slow growth of remittances, the aggregate sent by Filipino migrant workers back to the Philippines still hit $25.32 billion in the first 11 months last year, up 4 percent from $24.34 billion in the same period the previous year.
The government earlier projected cash-remittance growth averaging 4 percent in 2017. Such remittances help support consumption activities in the country. Other foreign-currency receipts, such as those generated by the various business-process outsourcing firms, help beef up the country’s external position.
Broken down, cash remittances from both land-based and sea-based workers recorded increments of 3.7 percent and 5.1 percent for January to November 2017, respectively.
The bulk of cash remittances for the first 11 months of the year came from the US, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Japan, United Kingdom, Qatar, Kuwait, Germany and Hong Kong.
The combined remittances from these countries accounted for 80.2 percent of total cash remittances.
Personal remittances, meanwhile, or the remittances that represent all current transfers in cash and in kind were 3.2 percent higher last November to reach $2.5
billion.