Money sent home by Filipinos working overseas shrank 4.5 percent in June from a year ago, after the government ordered the repatriation of workers suffering abuse in the Middle East.
Data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas showed that cash remittances fell to a three-month low of $2.357 billion in June from $2.467 billion a year ago. This followed a 6.9-percent increase in May this year and a 5.7-percent rise in June 2017.
The countries that registered the biggest declines in cash remittances in June were the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.
“The OFW repatriation program of the government may have partly affected the remittance flows for the month. During the first two months of 2018, a total of 4,149 OFWs were repatriated from UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait,” the Bangko Sentral said.
Preliminary data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration also showed that the number of land-based workers deployed to other countries dropped 3.28 percent in 2017 to 1,614,674 million from a year ago.
The number of sea-based workers deployed in 2017 also fell 14.62 percent to 378,072 workers.
Personal remittances, which include non-cash items, fell 4.9 percent in June to $2.615 billion from $2.751 billion a year ago.
Data showed that despite the drop in June, total cash remittances in the first half grew 2.7 percent to $14.179 billion from $13.813 billion in the same period last year.
Cash remittances from land-based workers and sea-based workers rose 2.5 percent and 3.4 percent to $11.2 billion and $3 billion, respectively.
Personal remittances, including non-cash items, totaled $15.787 billion in the first six months, up 2.8 percent from $15.364 billion a year earlier.
Cash remittances from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, UAE, Japan, Qatar, Germany, Hong Kong and Canada accounted for more than 79 percent of total cash remittances in January to June.
Personal remittances from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more grew 2.5 percent to $12.2 billion, while transfers from sea-based workers and land-based workers with short-term contracts increased 3.4 percent to $3.2 billion.
British banking and financial giant Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. said remittances would likely recover in the months ahead after the government lifted the deployment ban to some countries in the Middle East.
President Rodrigo Duterte earlier ordered the repatriation of thousands of OFWs from Kuwait where they were allegedly maltreated. Duterte appealed to OFWs in Kuwait to return to the country after Kuwait expelled the Philippine ambassador for launching rescue missions for Filipinos abused by their employers in the Gulf state.
Remittances, which account for a tenth of the gross national income, hit a record $28.06 billion in 2017, up 4.3 percent from $26.90 billion in 2016.
The Bangko Sentral projected a 4-percent growth for remittances in 2018.