MONEY sent home by Filipinos abroad hit its highest monthly level on record in December, enabling the full-year tally to surpass the 2014 growth target set by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
Cash remittances which Filipinos coursed through banks jumped by 6.6% year-on-year to $2.317 billion in December -- the highest monthly level according to central bank data dating back to 1970.
The December result brought the 2014 tally up by 5.8% to $24.308 billion, higher than the $21.991 billion logged in 2013 and topping the upwardly revised 5.5% goal set by the BSP in November last year.
“Strong demand for skilled Filipino manpower contributed to the steady growth of remittances,” the central bank said in a statement.
Cash remittances from land-based workers made up the bulk at $18.7 billion, while those from sea-borne workers totaled $5.6 billion.
Major sources of cash remittances were the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the United Kingdom, Singapore, Japan, Canada, and Hong Kong.
Citing Philippine Overseas Employment Administration data, the BSP said a total of 1.6 million Filipinos were deployed overseas last year.
At the same time, approved job orders from January to December stood at 878,609, up 10% from 2013.
About 43.6% were intended for service, production, and professional, technical and related workears in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Taiwan, and Qatar, the BSP noted.
The BSP said that cash remittances accounted for 8.5% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014.
After achieving stellar economic growth of 6.8% in 2012 and 7.2% in 2013, the Philippine economy slowed to 6.1% in 2014, a few points shy of the government’s 6.5-7.5% target.
Crawling farm sector output and lower-than-programmed -- and at times even contracting -- state spending had weighed on GDP growth for much of last year. -- Daryll Edisonn D. Saclag
source: Businessworld
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