MANILA, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- Personal remittances from overseas Filipinos (OFs) for the first 11 months of 2018 reached 29.1 billion U.S. dollars, 2.9 percent higher than the level posted a year ago, the Philippine central bank said on Tuesday.
For November 2018, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Officer-in-Charge Maria Almasara Cyd Amador said personal remittances from OFs grew by 2.4 percent year-on-year to 2.6 billion U.S. dollars.
Amador said the growth in personal remittances during the first eleven months of 2018 was supported by remittance inflows from land-based OFs with work contracts of one year or more as well as remittances from sea-based and land-based OFs with work contracts of less than one year which increased by 2.8 percent and 4.0 percent, respectively.
Meanwhile, Amador said cash remittances rose by 2.8 percent year-on-year to 2.3 billion U.S. dollars in November 2018.
The countries that contributed most to the increase for the month were Canada and the United States, she added.
For the first eleven months of 2018, she said cash remittances reached 26.1 billion U.S. dollars, or a 3.1 percent increase compared to the 25.3 billion U.S. dollars registered in the same period in 2017.
Amador said cash remittances from both land-based amounting to 20.5 billion U.S. dollars and sea-based workers amounting to 5.5 billion U.S. dollars recorded increments of 2.8 percent and 4.1 percent for January to November 2018, respectively.
Amador said the bulk of cash remittances for the first eleven months of 2018 came from the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Japan, Britain, Qatar, Canada, Germany, and China's Hong Kong.
Cash remittances from these countries and regions accounted for almost 79 percent of total cash remittances, Amador added.
Remittances are earnings of Filipinos working abroad that are transferred to their home families.
Personal remittances are sent by Filipino migrant workers both in cash and in kind. The personal remittances of OFs in 2017 accounted for 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).
