Personal remittances reach $10.5 billion in January–April

July 16, 2020

Personal remittances from overseas Filipinos amounted to $2.276 billion in April  16.1 percent lower than the $2.713 billion recorded in April 2019, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas ( BSP) said Wednesday.

This brought the cumulative remittances for the first four months of the year to $10.494 billion, a slight decrease of 2.9 percent from the $ 10.811 billion recorded in the comparable period in 2019.

Personal remittances from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more declined to $1.677 billion in April, 17.9 percent lower than $2.043 billion recorded in April 2019.

Remittances from sea-based workers and land-based workers with work contracts of less than one year fell by 10.2 percent to $0.547 billion in April  from $0.609 billion a year ago.

Overseas Filipino cash remittances that are coursed through banks declined by 16.2 percent to $2.046 billion in April from $2.441 billion in April 2019.

The decline in cash remittances was attributed to the unexpected repatriation of some overseas Filipinos deployed in countries heavily affected by the pandemic, and temporary closure/limited operating hours of some banks and institutions from both the sending and receiving ends that provide money transfer services during the lockdown.

For the period January–April, cash remittances amounted to $9.448 billion, 3 percent lower than the $9.739 billion registered in the comparative period last year.

This developed as remittances of both land-based and sea-based workers, fell by 3.5 percent (to $7.335 billion from $7.597 billion) and 1.3 percent (to $2.114 billion from $2.142 billion), respectively.

By country source, the United States registered the highest share to total overseas Filipino remittances at 39.6 percent for the period. It was followed by Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Japan, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Canada, Qatar, Hong Kong, and Korea.1 The combined remittances from these countries accounted for 79.1 percent of total cash remittances.