OFW remittances up 43% to $4.1-B in 6 months

Remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) posted a massive 43.2 percent growth during the first six months of the year as skilled workers continued to leave the country for lack of jobs.

Data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) indicated that OFW remittances amounted to $4.143 billion in January to June, contributing the bulk of the two-fold increase in the country’s income account.

According to the BSP, the significant increase in remittances was due to the corresponding 4.1 percent increase in the number of workers deployed abroad mostly to Europe, Africa and the Americas.

Although Filipino workers have traditionally been streaming into the booming economies in the Middle East, more and more workers were finding employment opportunities in other parts of the world, particularly Africa and Europe.

By skills category, the BSP said the increase in deployed workers was noted mainly for transport equipment operators as well as professional, technical and related workers.

Labor has been the country’s most important and single most profitable export since the seventies, accounting for a whole percentage point of the gross national product (GNP).

From January to June this year, over half a million Filipino workers left for abroad.

Remittances from OFWs have fueled domestic consumer spending, the one powerhouse of the Philippine economy that has been able to dampen economic disruption and volatility.

The BSP said government was stepping up marketing missions to send even more Filipinos abroad, exploring prospects for expanded hiring in the United Kingdom, the main destination of Filipino medical and health care personnel.

The paradox of labor exodus has been noted by various investment banks which said that in the face of a bleak economy, overseas workers would be the country’s source of income.

In a paper analyzing the Philippine economy, Deutsche Bank earlier said that remittances from OFWs represented 10 percent of total gross domestic product.