OFW remittances in January to February climb to $5.6 billion, up by 5%

May 15, 2020

Personal remittances from overseas Filipinos (OFs) amounted to $2.62 billion in February 2020, higher by 2.6 percent from $2.56 billion recorded in February 2019, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said Friday.

On a year-to-date basis, remittances for the first two months of 2020 grew by 5 percent to $5.566 billion from the previous year’s level of $5.302 billion.

Personal remittances from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more rose to $2 billion, 3.5 percent higher than $1.9 billion recorded in February 2019.

Meanwhile, remittances from sea-based workers and land-based workers with work contracts of less than one year declined by 0.9 percent to $0.56 billion from $0.57 billion from a year ago.

Cash remittances from OFWs coursed through banks posted a 2.5 percent growth to $2.36 billion in February 2020 from $2.3 billion in February 2019.

For the period January-February 2020, cash remittances amounted to $5 billion, representing an increase of 4.6 percent from the $4.8 billion registered in the comparative period last year.

By country source, the United States registered the highest share to overall remittances at 39 percent.

It was followed by Singapore, Japan, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Canada, Hong Kong, and Korea.

The combined remittances from these countries accounted for 79.4 percent of total cash remittances. BSP