Cash remittances, or money sent home by land-based and sea-based overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) through the banking system, reached $2.89 billion in August 2024, up by 3.2 percent from $2.80 billion posted in the same month last year.
“The growth in cash remittances in August 2024 was due to the growth in receipts from land- and sea-based workers,” the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said Tuesday.
This brought total cash remittances to $22.22 billion in the first eight months of 2024, up by 2.9 percent from $21.58 billion registered a year ago.
Meanwhile, personal remittances which cover cash sent through banks and informal channels as well as remittances in kind, rose 3.3 percent to $3.20 billion in August 2024 from $3.10 billion in the same month last year.
The growth was driven by higher remittances from land-based workers with longer-term contracts and those with shorter-term contracts in both sea and land-based sectors, it said.
Cumulatively, remittances from January to August 2024 grew 3 percent to $24.74 billion from $24.01 billion a year earlier.
Personal remittances are computed as the sum of net compensation of employees, personal transfers and capital transfers between households.
The growth in remittances from the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Singapore contributed mainly to the increase in remittances in the eight-month period.
The also posted the largest share of overall cash remittances during the period, followed by Singapore and Saudi Arabia
“For the coming months, single-digit/modest growth in OFW remittances could still continue as OFW families/dependents still need to cope up with relatively higher prices/inflation locally that would require the sending of more remittances,” said Michael Ricafort, chief economist at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp.
He said risk of economic slowdown or even recession in the US as well as in other countries that host large number of OFWs would still be a drag for OFW remittances.
