Cash remittances total $32.54 B in 2022
Cash remittances sent home by Overseas Filipinos (OF) reached $32.539 billion in 2022, up by 3.6 percent from 2021 of $31.418 billion.
The 3.6 percent growth is below the four percent projection of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) for 2022. The BSP has an annual four percent cash remittances projection for several years in a row. In 2021, this target was exceeded when cash remittances increased by 5.1 percent year-on-year.
Still, the BSP called the 2022 results as “robust inward remittances” that “reflected the increasing demand for foreign workers amid the reopening of economies.”
“The full-year 2022 level accounted for 8.9 percent and 8.4 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Income (GNI), respectively,” it noted.
Cash remittances are OF fund transfers transacted via the formal banking system while personal remittances includes the sum of the net compensation of overseas Filipino workers such as personal transfers and capital transfers between households.
In a report on Wednesday, Feb. 15, the BSP said total personal remittances amounted to $36.136 billion last year, also up by 3.6 percent from 2021 of $34.884 billion.
For the month of December 2022 alone, cash remittances increased by 5.8 percent to $3.159 billion versus same period in 2021 of $2.987 billion. Personal remittances, meantime, went up by 3.7 percent to $3.487 billion from $3.298 billion.
The bank-channelled remittances sent by land-based OFs totalled $2.51 billion in December from $2.38 billion same time in 2021. Sea-based workers, on the other hand, remitted $640 million from $610 million.
As for personal remittances, land-based workers transferred $2.73 billion in December versus $2.58 billion same time in 2021, while sea-based workers remitted $700 million from $670 million in the previous year.
The BSP said the higher cash remittances from major country sources such as the US, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Qatar, and United Kingdom “contributed largely” to the end-2022 total remittances.
The US continue to post the highest share of overall remittances in 2022, followed by Singapore and Saudi Arabia. The US will naturally emerge as a top remittances source because remittance centers course these cash transfers through correspondent banks based in the US.
Last year, 41.2 percent of total remittances came from the US, while seven percent were from Singapore and six percent from Saudi Arabia. Japan, United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates contributed 5.1 percent, 4.7percent and 4.2 percent of total remittances, respectively.