Money sent home by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) increased to its highest level in three months in October, but were not enough to boost the year-to-date amount, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said on Tuesday.
Central bank data showed that personal remittances — personal transfers in cash or kind and capital transfers between households — reached $3.04 billion in the 10th month, a 5.4-percent and 2.5-percent increase from $2.88 billion in September and $2.96 billion in October 2019, respectively.
The amount was the widest since July’s $3.08 billion.
In a statement, the BSP traced the uptick to the increase in remittances from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more to $2.374 billion in the month, 3.3 percent wider than the $2.298 billion a year ago.
“Similarly, remittances from sea-based workers and land-based workers with work contracts of less than one year rose slightly by 1.2 percent to $612 million in October 2020 from $605 million a year ago,” it said.
The latest figure failed to lift the January-to-October tally, which only reached $27.34 billion, a 1-percent dip from $27.61 billion in the same period in 2019.
Cash remittances, which only count money coursed through banks, hit $2.74 billion in October, a 5.61-percent jump from $2.60 billion a month earlier and up 2.5 percent from $2.67 billion a year ago.
The BSP attributed this expansion to the growth in remittances from land-based ($2.186 billion) and sea-based ($561.2 million) workers by 3.3 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively.
For the first 10 months, cash remittances increased by 0.9 percent to $24.63 billion from $24.85 billion in the same period last year.
By country source, year-to-date remittances from Saudi Arabia, Japan, the United
Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Germany and Kuwait declined, while those from the United States, Singapore, Qatar, Oman, Hong Kong and Taiwan increased.
The US had the largest share to total OFW remittances from January to October at 40.2 percent. It was followed by Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the UK, the UAE, Canada, Hong Kong, Qatar and Taiwan.
“The combined remittances from these countries accounted for 78.7 percent of the total cash remittances,” the Bangko Sentral said.
In a comment, Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) chief economist Michael Ricafort said remittances could still increase as overseas Filipinos could tap their savings to send money home for Christmas.
“Thus, OFW remittances for 2020 could average close to 0 percent, still considered decent despite the adverse economic effects of Covid-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) and better than earlier estimates, from [the] 0.9-percent average decline from January to October 2020,” he added.
This could be offset by the increased number of OFWs repatriated to the country, Ricafort said.
The central bank projects these inflows to plunge by 2 percent this year, “even as the year-to-date actual remittances improved with a lower contraction of 1.4 percent as of September 2020 as Covid-19 cases have risen in some host countries and lockdowns were implemented anew.”
Next year, it expects remittances to bounce back by 4 percent.