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Published June 17, 2010 | 
OFW remittances total $5.9B in first 4 months NIKKA CORSINO, GMANews.TV More overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) sent money to relatives in the Philippines as the global economy gradually recovered from the recession, the central bank said Wednesday. BSP Gov. Amando Tetangco Jr. said in a statement that a steady demand for Filipino workers abroad and the expansion of bank and non-bank service providers to capture a larger share of the global remittance market propped up the OFW remittances. This, he said, brought about a $361-million increase in the money sent home by OFWs to $5.86 billion from January to April, compared to $5.49 billion a year earlier. OFW remittances totaled $1.5 billion in April, up 5.4-percent year-on-year. This was the third highest amount of monthly remittances after the $1.567 billion in money transfers posted in December and $1.553 billion in March. "Notwithstanding concerns over sovereign debt problems in some European countries, remittances from overseas Filipinos continued to show strength amidst the gradual recovery of the global economy," the central bank said in a statement. About 81.4 percent of the money transferred via local banks came from the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, UK, Japan, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, and Italy. The Asean-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement, which came to force in March would spur more job opportunities for Filipino nurses and engineers in the free trade zone, the BSP said. There were 137,888 Filipinos waiting for deployment aboard in the first four months, up by 11 percent from 124,170 a year earlier, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration said. Job seekers whose applications were approved in the same period totaled 295,373, POEA said. Central bank data showed that The number of commercial banks' established tie-ups, remittance centers, correspondent banks, branches and representative offices abroad to 4,483 as of March from 4,192 at the end of 2009. The BSP has upgraded its growth forecast of OFW remittances to 8 percent from 6 percent, owing to the strong demand for Filipino skilled workers. Last year, remittances went up by 5.4 percent to a new record level of $17.348 billion from $16.426 billion, exceeding the revised 4-percent growth forecast by the central bank. —VS, GMANews.TV
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