Money sent home by overseas Filipino workers in November 2021 rose 5.1 percent to $2.502 billion from $2.379 billion a year ago, sustaining its resilience despite the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, latest data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas show.
The BSP in a statement Friday attributed the higher cash remittances to the increase in receipts from land-based and sea-based workers, which grew 6.3 percent (or $1.968 billion from $1.852 billion) and 1.2 percent (to $534 million from $527 million), respectively.
The November figures brought cash remittances in the first 11 months to $28.43 billion, up 5.2 percent from $27.013 billion a year ago.
“The growth in cash remittances from the United States, Taiwan, and Malaysia contributed largely to the increase in remittances in January-November 2021,” the BSP said.
The US in terms of country sources posted the highest share of overall remittances at 40.7 percent in the first 11 months of 2021, followed by Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Taiwan, Qatar, and South Korea. The combined remittances from these top 10 countries accounted for 78.9 percent of the total during the period.
Personal remittances, which include non-cash items, also rose 4.8 percent to $2.77 billion in November 2021 from $2.643 billion recorded in the same month a year ago.
This resulted in personal remittances of $31.586 billion from January to November 2021, up 5.3 percent from the $29.988 billion in the comparable period in 2020.
The increase in personal remittances in November was due to remittances sent by land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more, which climbed 6.3 percent to $2.137 billion from $2.01 billion in the same month last year, and sea- and land-based workers with work contracts of less than one year, which rose 1 percent to $581 million from 575 million a year ago.
Remittances account for around 10 percent of the gross domestic product annually.
Remittances in 2020 slightly declined by 0.8 percent to $29.903 billion from the record $30.133 billion in 2019 as the pandemic impacted on the deployment of overseas Filipino workers and many countries implemented stricter quarantine restrictions.
However, the 0.8-percent decline was better than the earlier forecast of a 20-percent contraction by some analysts at the height of the onslaught of the pandemic.
The BSP had expected cash remittances in 2021 to grow 6 percent on the back of an mproving global economic outlook.