By BSP PR/PNA
MANILA – Personal remittances from overseas Filipinos (OFs) for the first 10 months of the year reached USD26.5 billion, equivalent to a 2.9 percent year-on-year growth.
For October alone, personal remittances totaled USD2.8 billion, higher by 8.0 percent from USD2.6 billion a year ago, BSP Governor Nestor A. Espenilla, Jr. announced Monday.
Personal remittances from land-based OFs with work contracts of one year or more posted an increase of 2.8 percent (at USD20.3 billion), while those from sea-based and land-based OFs with work contracts of less than one year increased by 4.2 percent (at USD5.5 billion) for January to October of 2018.
Likewise, for the first 10 months of 2018, cash remittances reached USD23.8 billion, or a 3.1 percent increase compared to the USD23.1 billion registered in the same period in 2017.
In October 2018, cash remittances from OFs coursed through banks grew by 8.7 percent year-on-year to USD2.5 billion.
The top countries that contributed to the increase were the United States, Canada, and Taiwan.
Cash remittances from both land-based (USD18.7 billion) and sea-based (USD5 billion) workers grew by 2.8 percent and 4.2 percent year-on-year, respectively.
By country source, 79 percent of the total cash remittances for the first 10 months of 2018 came from the US, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Japan, United Kingdom, Qatar, Canada, Germany, and Hong Kong.
