Personal Remittances Reaches $24.6 Billion for First 9 Months of 2019

November 19, 2019 – The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reveals that personal remittances reach US$24.6 billion in the first 9 months of 2019.

According to the Central Bank, Filipinos abroad remitted US$2.6 billion in September 2019. This data is 6.3% higher than that of the same month last year, which stood at US$2.5 billion. The new data means personal remittances are 3.9% higher than last year’s US$23.7 billion.

Majority of the remittances are from land-based overseas workers with one year or more work contracts. Their remittances totaled US$18.8 billion versus US18.2 billion last year. For those with short-term contracts (both land and sea-based), the amount increased to US$5.3 billion this year versus last year’s US$4.9 billion.

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There is also an increase in cash remittances from Overseas Filipino Workers. For the first 9 months, the recorded inflow is $22.2 billion for cash remittances versus US$21.3 billion within the same period last year.

Total remittances from the US dwarfs remittances from other countries at 37,5%. The US is followed by Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Japan, the UK, Canada, Hong Kong, Germany, and Kuwait. These non-US countries combined for 78.3% of the total cash remittances.

In the previous report, BSP said that the country data might be skewed in favor of the US, especially if the banks from various countries are coursing the remittances through a bank in the US.

This article is published on BitPinas: Personal Remittances Reaches $24.6 Billion for First 9 Months of 2019

Data from BSP can be found here.

Photo by Eugenio Pastoral on Unsplash