OFWs sent home $1.623B in June, a new monthly record

The continued deployment of professionals and skilled Filipinos abroad pushed remittances in June to a new monthly record of $1.623 billion, the central bank said Monday. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said that the money sent home by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in June increased by 8.3 percent or $125 million from the same month in 2009. "In June alone, remittance flows peaked at $1.623 billion, reflecting a year-on-year expansion of 8.3 percent, boosted by remittances from both sea-based and land-based workers," BSP Gov. Amando Tetangco Jr. said in a statement. OFWs sent $1.578 billion in May, Bangko Sentral data showed. In the first six months of the year, remittances went up by 6.9 percent to $9.062 billion from $8.479 billion in the same period a year ago. Money transfers were done in the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, and Italy. These countries accounted for 81.7 percent of the total remittances in the first half of the year. Tetangco said data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration showed that jobs approved as of July 2010 reached 356,878, more than a third of which consisted of job orders processed for service, professional, technical, and production sectors. Workers classified as new hires with processed contracts and are awaiting deployment rose by 13.5 percent to 212,700 for the first half of the year from 187,338 in the same period last year, Tetangco noted. "The continued deployment of professional and skilled Filipino overseas workers, given favorable global employment opportunities, underpinned the resilience of remittances," Tetangco said. —JE/VS, GMANews.TV