February personal remittances reach US$2.761 billion
MANILA – The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) today said personal remittances from overseas Filipinos (OFs) reached US$2.761 billion last February which they found higher by 5.3 percent than the US$2.623 billion in February 2020.
The increase in remittances was due to the 7.8 percent growth in remittances from land-based workers with contracts of one year of more to US$2.152 billion from the US$1.997 billion in February 2020.
Remittances from sea-based workers and land-based workers with work contracts of less than one year declined by 4.6 percent to US$540 million from US$566 million a year ago.
The BSP said on a cumulative basis, remittances for the first two months of the year amounted to US$5.665 billion where it represented a 1.6 percent growth year-on-year from the US$5.566 billion, despite the slack in remittances reported in January 2021.
Cash remittances from OFs coursed through banks reached a 5.1 percent increase to US$2.477 billion in February 2021 from US$2.358 billion in February last year. Cash remittances from land-based workers increased by 7.8 percent to US$1.982 billion while remittances from sea-based workers decreased by 4/6 percent to US$495 million.
Cash remittances for the first two months of the year reached US$5.08 billion where an increase of 1.5 percent was noted with remittances from January-February 2020 amounted to US$5.006 billion.
The growth in remittances from January to February this year came from the United States (US), Malaysia, and Singapore. In terms of country sources. The US registered the highest share to overall remittances at 41% for the first two months. Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Malaysia, Taiwan and Qatar. The combined remittances from the ten countries amounted to 78.3 of the total cash remittances/. (Melo M. Acuna)