RP overseas workers send home $6.3b

RP overseas workers send home $6.3b

MANILA: Filipinos working overseas remitted home about US$6.3 billion between January and October this year, up 5.7 percent from the same period last year, the central bank said Monday.

This rise came even though the number of Filipinos who legally went abroad to work shrank by 9.9 percent to 698,691 during the same period, it said in a statement.

The higher remittances were attributed to the deployment of more Filipinos in higher-earning sectors rather than as manual laborers or domestic helpers.

The central bank expressed confidence that remittances for the whole of 2003 would be six percent higher than last year.

Major sources of overseas workers' remittances were the United States, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Britain, Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

Overseas remittances account for about 10.8 percent of gross domestic product and about 15 percent of current account receipts. There are more than five million Filipinos working overseas. -- AFP