- Overseas Filipino Worker Remittances grew 4.9% in the year to February
2009. The level of remittances rose to 1.32bn US dollars from 1.26bn
dollars in January.
- This was better than we expected; the normal seasonal change is for
remittances to remain relatively stable in February compared to January.
- As we highlighted in Southeast Asian Focus - Philippines: Important
signposts; Ed Teather; 3 April 2009 remittances have, as one should
expect, experienced much less downside than exports in recent months
(see chart 1). Positively, the BSP governor attributed the rise in
remittances to a rising deployment of workers and a slowdown in the
increase in the number of reported layoffs. The increase in the number
of workers deployed in January and February was 27.3% on the year.
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Monday, April 20, 2009
UBS Asian Economic Comment - Philippines: Remittances Holding Up
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Ang Magagawa ng OFW Bukod sa Magpadala ng Pera
Mga pwedeng pang gawin ng OFW at Pinoy abroad para makatulong sa Pilipinas bukod sa pagpapadala ng remittance. Mula sa librong KAPENG ARABO:
Kung magbabakasyon, piliin ang ilang lugar sa Pinas. Napuntahan mo na ba ang world-class resorts ng Bora, Palawan, Puerto Gallera, Pagudpod, Dakak, at Camiguin? Nabisita mo na ang UNESCO heritage site ng Vigan at Fort Ilocandia? Naramdaman mo na ba ang calmness ng isla ng Batanes? O makalaglag-pangang wonders ng Bohol? Nasubukan mo na bang maglangoy kasama ng whale sharks ng Sorsogon? Hindi natin kailangan pang gastusin ang pera natin sa ibang lugar. Sa ‘pinas na lang, solve ka na. In the end, tayo pa rin ang makikinabang.
Gawin misyon ang makapag-recruit ng at least 1 turista sa ‘Pinas sa buong OFW lifetime. Malaking tulong ito sa industriya ng turismo.
Kung bibili ng damit o gamit, gawin mo na sa Pinas. Isipin na lang kung may isang milyong Pinoy na nagbabakasyon sa isang taon, at bibili ng tig-iisang damit. Aba ! Laking tulong sa namumuhunan. Mas ok kung Pinoy product pa. Pero kung foreign brand naman, sa Pinas mo pa rin bilhin. At least sa Pinas pa rin papasok ang tax non.
Sa Pinas na rin bumili ng pasalubong. Halos lahat naman ng meron sa labas ng bansa, mayron na rin sa atin.
Kung may extra ka rin lang naming pera, pag-aralin ang kamag-anak o kung sino mang napipisil mong walang kakayanan. O kung wala ka namang kamag-anak, puwedeng sumangguni sa mga organisasyong may katulad na layunin.
Magtayo ng negosyo sa Pinas kahit maliit lang. Huwang munang asamin kumita ng malaki, basta mapaikot lang ang puhunan. Isipin na lang muna na training ito para mas malaking business venture sa future.
Hindi natin kailangan gumawa ng malalaking effort para makakuha ng malaking results. Kadalasan pa nga ang pagkalunod natin sa malalaking undertaking ang pumapatay sa hangarin nating makagawa ng magagandang bagay. Dapat simulan natin sa mga simple lang. Mga simpleng bagay pero may malalim na kahulugan.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Philippines remittances in context, UBS Study
Near term, however, we remain cautious, although the fierceness of the de-leveraging trend does appear to have lessened in recent days.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Women OFWs Many But Remit Less Than Men
 | Filipina overseas workers inside the Kota Raya mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (including a manicurist) visibly prove that women working abroad still have the numbers, even if a recent government survey showed that they remit lesser amounts than men. |
| KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA–FOR 12 years, Rita’s family in the Philippines was fed through two shoe-box sized containers at her feet. The rectangular matte-black boxes, scuffed with use, contain Rita’s tools of the trade: nail clippers, nippers, two-inch tall bottles of silver, gold, and red nail polishes, blush-on brushes and mascara. For more than a decade, Rita relied on her being a manicurist and pedicurist, enabling her to send money to her family in Bansalan, Davao del Sur. Rita is one of millions of female laborers and unskilled workers who remain the leading number of OFWs in the annual Survey on Overseas Filipinos (SOF) of the National Statistics Office. But their meager salaries abroad have not made them the top remitters compared to their counterpart male low-skilled workers. While not revealing how much she sends monthly, Rita says she earns an average 100 ringgits (a minimum of P1,365.40 at current exchange rates) a day. |
Notably, that is still below the RM150 daily cost of living allowance that the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) said the government provided to public sector employees last year.
Malaysia, where Rita is, hosts some 244,967 Filipinos there, according to newly released stock estimates of the government-run Commission on Filipinos Overseas.
Of this number, the CFO estimates nearly half are undocumented; the rest have declared Malaysia their permanent home (26,002) while the remaining are temporary migrants with legal travel and working documents.
The CFO data, sadly, is not gender-disaggregated.
The SOF, however, is. In 2006, it affirmed there were more women OFWs: 764,000 versus 751,000 men working and living outside the Philippines.
That year, they poured into the Philippines an estimated P102 billion in cash and in-kind remittances.
Cash remittances refer to those sent from host countries, as well as money that OFWs brought home.
That estimated total cash and in-kind remittances was higher than the PhP85.1 billion total in the 2005 SOF.
For cash remittances, the 2006 SOF saw OFWs remitting nearly P76 billion from April to September that year.
But while there are more women OFWs, male migrant workers sent more during that period: nearly P51 billion as against the P26 billion by women.
Analysts expect remittances from women to drop as there was a decrease in the deployment of Filipino domestic helpers last year.
WHILE laborers and unskilled workers were the most number of OFWs from the 2001 to the 2006 editions of the SOF, two occupational groups of male workers have been the leading remitters.
From 2001 to 2005, male "plant and machine operators and assemblers" have been the top remitters –from nearly P8 billion in 2001 to just above P10 billion after five years.
Two years ago, male "trades and related workers" grabbed the top spot by remitting some P13 billion.
The NSO survey aims to know remittance amounts and channels by OFWs by age, sex, country of work, and region of origin in the Philippines.
Female laborers and unskilled workers alone make up the largest OFW group by type of occupation and gender.
Of the estimated 1.515 million OFWs in the 2006 SOF survey, a third of them are laborers and unskilled workers —including some 313,000-plus females. There were some 268,000 female laborers and unskilled workers in the 2003 SOF.
OFWs categorized as "trade and related workers,” are those who “apply their specific knowledge and/or skills in the field of mining, construction, form metal, set machine tools, or make fit, maintain, or repair machinery, equipment or tools produce or process food stuff, textile or wooden, metal and other articles”.
“Plant and machine operators and assemblers" are workers who “operate and monitor industrial machinery and equipment on the spot or by remote control, drive and operate trains, motor vehicles and mobile machinery and equipment, or assemble products from component parts”.
Laborers and unskilled workers are made up of those workers "who perform simple tasks which mainly require the use of hand-held tools and often some physical effort”.
Rita is under this category.
For 12 years, Rita has provided manicure and pedicure services to Filipino, Malaysian and foreign customers at a shoe store inside Kota Raya mall. Her “office space” is a half-square-meter floor filled to the ceiling with boxes of shoes that she also sells.
She shares the space with a Malaysian with a dining table for two customers.
She and women and unskilled OFWs like her have the lowest six-month average cash remittance sent, according to the SOF.
The average monthly remittance by female laborers and unskilled workers was pegged by the SOF at P36,000.
The 2001 to 2006 SOF results showed laborers and unskilled workers, trade and related workers, and plant and machine operators and assemblers always outnumbered professionals in terms of actual worker count and remittance volumes.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Remittances Help Foil Asia Crisis Repeat, World Bank Study Says
MANILA—ACROSS the East Asia region sweeps the wind of prosperity and cash remittances as well as knowledge capital by migrant workers has helped economies become more robust a decade after a devastating crisis.
Aside from the Philippines, the World Bank cited remittances from workers overseas also helped other countries like Vietnam and Mongolia to beef up cash reserves. Hence, remittances could soften and may even foil a repeat of the 1997 Asian crisis –if ever there would be one in the near future.
“A decade after the financial crisis that devastated East Asia in 1997-98, the region is far wealthier, has fewer poor people and a larger global role than ever before. Led by continued strong growth in China, Emerging East Asia now has an aggregate output of over $5 trillion, double the dollar value just before the crisis,” said the WB report titled “Ten Years after the Crisis”.
The report noted that the economies affected by the crisis: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Korea, and Thailand, posted real per capita incomes “significantly” exceeding pre-crisis levels.
The WB noted that the first three economies achieved real per capita income growth of 3-3.5 percent, “with per-capita growth in Korea and Thailand averaging 4-4.5 percent” in the four years ending 2006.
The cause, in particular with the Philippines, is consumption or the purchase of consumers by what the country’s factories produce, retailers sell, and businesses import-for-sale from abroad.
“Consumers in the Philippines also increased real expenditures by 5-6 percent, supported in part by a 20-percent rise in remittances from abroad,” the WB said.
Compared with Thailand's 3.2-percent consumer-demand growth last year, the Philippines posted a 5.5-percent growth from just 4.9 percent in 2005. Both countries are regarded as developing economies compared to the four newly industrialized economies of Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, China.
The bank noted that remittances, coupled with the strong performance of the Philippines’s electronics exports, “far outweighed the impact of higher imported oil prices on the current account”.
The country’s current account –available cash for loans, payment of debts, for investments, and others flowing in the system- jumped to a US$5-billion surplus last year from US$2 billion in 2005.
The percentage increase (to US$12.8 billion in 2006) in remittances, the WB added, underscores the vital role played by money from Filipinos working abroad.
“Through these flows [remittances and transfers for the balance of payments], which together account for over 13 percent of GDP [gross domestic product], large trade deficits have been transformed into current account surpluses, which in 2006 grew to over four percent of GDP,” the bank said.
A trade deficit would mean the Philippines buys more products from other countries than what it sells or exports.
Remittances may be one of the reasons why the Philippines, along with Korea and Malaysia, quickly “regained their pre-crisis level of per-capita income by 1999, while this took longer, till 2003, in Indonesia and Thailand,” according to the WB report.
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IMF Team Affirms Weak Links Between OFW Money, Investment
BY JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO
MANILA—A TEAM from the International Monetary Fund observed that remittances from an estimated eight million Filipinos abroad have not led to increased investments.
Ever since the country’s investment ratio has steadily declined since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, increasing remittances “has not increased investment,” IMF’s Ayako Fujita and Srikant Seshadri wrote in a policy analysis paper of selected Philippine economic issues done by a six-person IMF team.
IMF’s Country Report 07/131 (released last March) analyzed selected economic issues such as reforms in the value added tax law, an analysis of the economic contributions of the services sector, and credit growth and bank balance sheets in the Philippines.
Both Fujita and Seshadri were part of a six-person team that consulted Philippine economic planning and finance officials last January as part of the lender’s periodic consultations with countries.The weak links between remittances and investment is such even if middle-to-high income migrant families, whose main source of income is remittances from dependents abroad, are rising, says the IMF team.
The team cited data from the triennial Family Income and Expenditures Survey of the National Statistics Office, the same data that Milan Brahmbhatt and Dan Biller based their analyses for a report on East Asia for the World Bank.
Citing 1991 to 2003 data from the triennial FIES, the number of the two lowest-income migrant families receiving remittances declined from 60 percent in 1991 to 18 percent in 2003.Likewise, the top two income brackets among migrant families that count income abroad as their main source of income rose from 40 percent in 1991 to 82 percent 12 years after.
“Given that some 80 percent of (Filipino migrant) families that receive income from abroad as their main source are now middle and high-income families, it is much more likely now than in 1991 that the uses for this income go beyond consumption and subsistence, and are put toward saving and investment,” the IMF team’s paper wrote.
But the situation surrounding remittances and investments suggests that the lack of a relationship between investment and remittances “could indeed be transitory, and that going forward, one may see a pick up in investment in physical capital.”
The weak links between remittances and investment, however, also occurs in many remittance-receiving countries. “Country specific factors could determine whether a rise in external flows leads to greater consumption, including housing-related spending on the one hand, or greater investment in fixed capital on the other,”
In the case of the Philippines, the IMF team members observed that financial intermediation is a primary issue. “(Philippine banks are) still repairing their balance sheets, and are risk averse in the current environment,” IMF observed. But even if there were financial intermediation, the IMF team thinks that remittances as a percentage of gross domestic product should have increased by three percentage points, and this situation “might have a more pronounced effect on Philippine investment, which continues to decline.
BPI joins fray to capture remittance from Pinoys in Europe
MAKATI CITY--BEFORE sliding to third position in the Philippine banking industry, Ayala family-led Bank of the Philippine Islands set its eyes on the profitable remittance market that Philippine National Bank previously dominated.
But with its shareholder hobbled by regulations in the United States, where bulk of remittances from some eight million overseas Filipinos go through, BPI settled for the United Kingdom.
This was what BPI president Aurelio R. Montinola III told stockholders during their annual meeting last March.“Why London, when you can target the United States where there are more overseas Filipino workers?” a shareholder echoed what would be expected questions from the banking industry.
“Certainly, we would like to have a branch in the US, but regulatory agencies would not allow us because of our partner, DBS, is not fully engaged in bank operations,” Montinola replied. Singapore's DBS Group, Southeast Asia's biggest bank, owns 20 percent of BPI. The rest of the shares are owned by Philippine conglomerate Ayala Corp., which also has assets and investments in real estate and water utility.
At the BPI stockholders’ meeting, executives revealed that the move to put up a branch in London, one of the world's financial centers, has been on the pipeline ever since the bank made inroads in the European remittance market.
According to its plans, BPI will shell out £20 million (or about P1.9 billion) to have a full service branch in London to beef up its remittance center currently based in Italy. Montinola said in March BPI expects to establish a UK-registered corporation in about six months, although the Financial Services Authority of London has already given BPI its British license to operate a bank last April 26.
“We are in the stage of finalizing our systems now. We are in one location and we need a second location [for technical purposes]. We expect that we would be in the pre-operation stage by about September or October this year and then, for next year, a full operation," he told reporters after the stockholders’ meeting.
“The whole point is to grow from remittance transactions to overseas banking relationships,” he added.
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