February 15, 2010
MANILA (AFP) - Cash sent home by Filipinos working abroad rose a stronger-than-expected 5.6 percent to 17.3 billion dollars last year as jobs remained plentiful despite the global crisis, the central bank said Monday.
Remittances from abroad in 2009 accounted for 10.8 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), according to the bank.
"Remittances remained resilient amid the recent global financial crisis, providing strong support to domestic demand," it said in a statement.
Many analysts had predicted that remittances from the roughly nine million overseas workers would drop in 2009 as many were expected to lose their jobs amid the global financial crisis.
But the 2009 total exceeded even the government's original target of 17.1 billion dollars, or a 4.0-percent increase over 2008, the central bank said.
Remittances in the month of December alone hit a record high of 1.57 billion dollars, an 11.4-percent increase over the same period in 2008, the central bank said.
Filipinos are the biggest source of merchant marine workers in the world, while many also work as nurses, doctors, teachers, construction workers and entertainers.
The central bank said there was a sustained demand for Filipino workers overseas throughout the crisis, specifically skilled workers such as engineers, medical practitioners and teachers.
It also cited government efforts to find more job openings for Filipinos abroad and the increasing number of ways the workers could remit money back home.
Countries in the Middle East that were not so badly hit by the crisis, Saudi Arabia in particular, were also able to absorb many of the Filipinos who lost their jobs elsewhere around the globe, the bank said.
However the United States remained the biggest source of remittances in 2009, followed by Canada, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Japan and Singapore.
World Bank country director Bert Hofman told reporters in Manila on Monday that the Philippines avoided the worst of the global crisis in 2009 "thanks to higher than expected growth in remittances".
Even so, the Philippines' economic growth was just 0.9 percent last year, which was the nation's worst performance since the Asian financial crisis caused a contraction of 0.6 percent in 1998.
