Bank-transferred cash remittances rose by 5.8 percent year-on-year as of end July to $17.771 billion from $16.802 billion, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported Wednesday.
The BSP said the growth in the cumulative cash remittances mostly came from these three countries: US, Malaysia and South Korea.
“We can expect the uptrend in remittance inflows as travel restrictions ease further and global economies now reopen,” BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno told the joint general assembly of six banking and financial associations on Thursday, including the Fund Managers Association of the Philippines and the Money Market Association of the Philippines. The BSP forecasts cash remittances to grow by four percent this year after the pandemic-induced 0.8 percent contraction in 2020.
The US registered the highest share of overall remittances at 40.4 percent for the first seven months. The US is usually tagged as main source of overseas Filipinos’ remittances because of a common practice among remittance centers to send funds through correspondent banks located in the US. The BSP said the US “would appear to be the main source of OF remittances because banks attribute the origin of funds to the most immediate source.”
After the US, the other top sources of cash remittances are Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, South Korea, Qatar, and Taiwan. The combined remittances from the top 10 countries accounted for 78.6 percent of total cash remittances, said the BSP.
For the month of July only, cash remittances went up by 2.5 percent year-on-year to $2.853 billion from $2.783 billion.
According to the BSP, “the increase in cash remittances was due to the growth in remittances from land-based workers and sea-based workers, which rose by 1.6 percent (to $2.308 billion from $2.273 billion) and 6.9 percent (to $545 million from $510 million), respectively.”
Personal remittances from Overseas Filipinos which is the sum of personal transfers and compensation of employees, also increased by 2.6 percent to $3.167 billion in July, from $3.085 billion in the same month in 2020.
Land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more sent home $2.506 billion for the month of July, up by 1.6 percent year-on-year from $2.467 billion. Both sea- and land-based workers with work contracts of less than one year remitted $595 million in July, up by 6.9 percent year-on-year from $557 million.
For the January-July period, personal remittances rose by six percent year-on-year to $19.783 billion from $18.658 billion.