The Philippines remains the world’s biggest supplier of both seafarers and officers, according to a maritime report released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport 2021 published on Nov. 18 showed about 700,000 Filipinos were deployed on domestic or foreign-flagged seagoing vessels. Over a quarter of all global merchant shipping crew members come from the Philippines.
It said that as of 2019, there were 380,000 Filipino seafarers overseas. By mid-2020, over the three months after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the quarantine imposed in the country, 50,000 Filipino seafarers were repatriated, but only 17,845 outbound or deployed seafarers were recorded by the authorities.
It said that while the Philippines continued to be the top country supplying maritime crew and officers to the world, revenues from deployment fell by 2.8 percent in 2020 to $6.4 billion from $6.5 billion in 2019.
In 2019, the Philippines earned more than $30.1 billion from overseas Filipino workers, including $6.5 billion from seafarers.