August remittances rise amid OFW demand

Shutterstock Photo

MANILA – As demands for Filipino labor remained strong overseas, remittances for the month of August continued to increase.

“The increase in remittances was driven largely by the steady increase in transfers from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more,” the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said on Wednesday.

A data from BSP indicated that OFWs sent a total of $2.05 billion worth of remittances, a figure that is 6 percent higher, on a year-on-year basis.

From January to August, the remittances increased by up to 5.8 percent to $15.5 billion.

BSP is now expecting the total remittances of the country for all of this year to further rise by 5 percent to about billion.

The increase is despite the political tensions in the Middle East where the number of overseas Filipino workers (OFW) remain significant.

Almost billion accounted for over 8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product recorded in last year’s remittances.