MANILA – Personal remittances from overseas Filipinos (OFs) amounted to USD2.56 billion in February 2019, higher by 1.2 percent from USD2.53 billion in February 2018.
This brought the cumulative remittances for the first two months of the year to USD5.30 billion, representing a 2.3 percent year-on-year growth, BSP governor Benjamin Diokno announced on Monday.
Personal remittances from sea-based and land-based workers with work contracts of less than one year rose by 8.5 percent to USD0.57 billion in February 2019 from USD0.53 billion in February 2018.
This compensated for the 0.43 percent decline in the personal remittances from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more, to USD1.93 billion from USD1.94 billion.
Meanwhile, cash remittances from OFs coursed through banks posted a 1.5 percent growth to USD2.30 billion in February 2019 from USD2.27 billion last year.
For the first two months of 2019, cash remittances amounted to USD4.78 billion, an increase of 3.0 percent compared to the USD4.65 billion level in the same period last year.
This growth was supported by the increase in remittances from both land-based (USD3.73 billion) and sea-based (USD1.06 billion) workers, which rose by 1.0 percent and 10.5 percent, respectively.
By country source, the United States registered the highest share of overall remittances for the period at 35.5 percent. It was followed by Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Japan, Canada, Qatar, Hong Kong, and Germany.
The combined remittances from these countries accounted for 77.3 percent of total cash remittances for January to February 2019./PN
