Money sent home by Filipinos working overseas increased 4.6 percent in 2015 to a record $25.767 billion from $24.628 billion in 2014, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said Friday.
Bangko Sentral said cash remittances in December grew 4.9 percent to $2.47 billion from $2.35 billion a year ago. This was also the biggest monthly inflow on record.
“Cash remittances from land-based and sea-based workers amounted to $20 billion and $5.8 billion, respectively… The continued deployment of skilled overseas Filipino workers remained a key factor to the growth in remittance inflows,” Bangko Sentral said in a statement.
Personal remittances, which include non-cash items, increased 4.4 percent last year to $28.483 billion from $27.273 billion in 2014. In December alone, personal remittances expanded 4.9 percent to $2.7 billion from $2.59 billion.
“The sustained growth in personal remittances during the year was driven by the steady increase in remittances from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more [by 4.4 percent] and from sea-based and land-based workers with work contracts of less than one year [by 5.3 percent],” Bangko Sentral said.
Bangko Sentral said the 2015 level represented 9.8 percent of the gross domestic product and 8.1 percent of the gross national income.
Preliminary data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration showed the number of deployed overseas Filipino workers in 2015 reached 1.8 million. Approved job orders for the year reached 835,247, of which 45 percent were processed.
These job orders were intended mainly for service, production, and professional, technical and related workers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, the country’s balance of payments swung to a deficit of $813 million in January this year from a $136-million surplus a year ago, after the government settled some of its foreign debt.
The January figure was also a sharp turnaround from the $481-million surplus recorded in December 2015.
“The $813-million deficit in January was largely due to payments by the national government for its maturing foreign exchange obligations and results of FX [foreign exchange] operations of the BSP,” Bangko Sentral Deputy Governor Diwa Guinigundo said in a text message.
“Based on latest data available, the $130-million net outflows recorded in BSP-registered foreign portfolio investments partly contributed to the deficit,” Guinigundo said.
Latest data showed that foreign portfolio investments or “hot money” posted a net outflow of $129.85 million last month, a reversal of the $592-million net inflow a year ago. It was, however, lower than the net outflow of $171 million in December 2015.
Bangko Sentral said the outflow was “mainly due to lingering concerns on China’s economic slowdown and the plunging global oil prices.”