Personal remittances from overseas Filipinos reach $2.5 billion in February: BSP

April 16, 2018

Personal remittances from overseas Filipinos (OFs) amounted to $2.5 billion in February 2018, higher by 5.4 percent than those sent in the same month a year ago, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Nestor Espenilla, Jr. announced Monday.

This brought the cumulative remittances for January to February to $5.2 billion, representing a year-on-year growth of 8.1 percent. Land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more recorded a 6.5 percent growth to $4 billion while those from sea-based and land-based workers with work contracts of less than one year rose by 9.7 percent to $1 billion.

Meanwhile, cash remittances from OFs coursed through banks reached $2.3 billion in February, up by 4.5 percent year-on-year.

For the first two months of 2018, cash remittances totaled $4.6 billion, an increase of 7.1 percent compared to the $4.3 billion level posted in the same period last year.

This was supported by the cash remittances both from land-based ($3.7 billion) and sea-based ($1.0 billion) workers which increased by 6.4 percent and 9.8 percent, respectively.

The United States (US), United Arab Emirates (UAE), Germany and Malaysia were the major contributors to the growth in cash remittances for the month. Remittances from the US and UAE each contributed 1.2 percentage points to the 4.5 percent overall growth.

Cash remittances from Germany and Malaysia each shared one percentage point to total growth in cash remittances.

By country source, the bulk of cash remittances for the January to February period came from the US, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Japan, United Kingdom, Qatar, Germany, Hong Kong and Canada.

The combined remittances from these countries accounted for almost 80 percent of total cash remittances. DMS