Personal remittances from Overseas Filipinos (OFs) on Monday totaled 2.9 billion U.S. dollars in July 2019, 7.2 per cent higher than the 2.7 billion U.S. dollars recorded in July 2018, the country’s central bank reports.
The Central Bank of the Philippines said personal remittances for the period January to July 2019 increased by 3.6 per cent to 19.1 billion U.S. dollars from 2018 level of 18.5 billion U.S. dollars.
The governor of the bank, Benjamin Diokno, said the steady growth in personal remittances during the first seven months of 2019 drew support from remittance inflows from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more.
This, it said, aggregated to 14.6 billion U.S. dollars from 14.2 billion U.S. dollars in the same period in 2018.
According to the bank, inflows from the compensation of sea-based workers and land-based workers with short-term contracts also contributed to this growth and totaled 4.1 billion U.S. dollars from 3.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2018.
The bank said the U.S. registered the highest share of overall remittances for January to July 2019 at 36.8 per cent.
It was followed by Saudi Arabia, Singapore, UAE, Britain, Japan, Canada, China’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Germany and Kuwait.
The Philippine government estimated the number of overseas Filipino workers at 12 million, accounting for more than one-tenth of the country’s population.
In 2018, personal remittances from overseas Filipinos grew by 3.1 per cent to 28.9 billion U.S. dollars.
Overseas Filipinos remittances were one of the largest sources of foreign exchange income in the Philippines.
