Philippines overseas remittances up 6.8% in September

Remittances from overseas Filipinos (OFs) jumped by 6.8 percent year on year to 2.1 billion U.S. dollars in September this year, the Philippine central bank said Friday. This is the sixth consecutive month in 2013 that personal remittances exceeded 2 billion dollars, central bank Governor Amando Tetangco, Jr. said. As a result, cumulative personal remittances from OFWs for the nine-month period increased to 18.2 billion dollars, 6.6 percent higher than the level posted during the same period in 2012. The BSP said the bulk of the remittances that entered the country came from land-based workers with contracts of over a year -- a good indication of the stability of flows. Cash from this segment made up 75.4 percent of the total for September. "Remittances were driven mainly by the steady demand for skilled and professional Filipino manpower," Tetangco said. Preliminary data from the Philippine Overseas Filipino Employment Administration (POEA) showed that at the end of September, approved job orders reached 609,948, of which 38.3 percent were processed job orders for services, production, professional and technical workers. These workers were hired in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, China's Taiwan, Qatar, and China's Hong Kong. Remittances are the country's largest source of foreign exchange, which allows the country to maintain a current account surplus that provides support for the peso. The BSP expects remittances to grow by 5 percent this year to 22.5 billion dollars. These inflows are one of the main drivers for domestic spending, which makes up about 70 percent of gross domestic product.