Remittances fall nearly 10% in March —BSP

Remittances from overseas Filipinos (OFs) saw a decline in March versus the same month last year, data released by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) on Tuesday showed.

Personal remittances fell by 9.9 percent to $2.627 billion from $2.915 billion year-on-year.

“The negative growth during the month was primarily due to base effect following the sharp increase in remittances in March 2017 at 10.7 percent,” the BSP said.

“Further contributing to the decline was the lesser number of banking days in March 2018 compared to the same month in 2017,” it said.

March 29 and 30 were declared as holidays due to the Holy Week.

“Moreover, the continued repatriation of OF workers from the Middle East countries could have affected the inflows of cash remittances,” the central bank said.

Still, the remittances in March were higher than the $2.528 billion in February.

This brought the first quarter personal remittances to a cumulative $7.809 billion, up 1.3 percent from $7.709 billion in January to March last year.

“The bulk (77.5 percent) of personal remittances was from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more, which summed up to $6.1 billion, while 20 percent was derived from sea-based and land-based workers with work contracts of less than one year, amounting to $1.6 billion for the same period,” the BSP said in a statement.

Cash remittances from the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Canada, Qatar, Germany, and Hong Kong accounted for 80.1 percent of total cash remittances in the first quarter, the central bank said. —Jon Viktor Cabuenas/VDS, GMA News