Remittances to remain stable

Despite deployment ban

MANILA, Philippines — Remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are expected to remain stable despite the possibility of a total deployment ban to Kuwait, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).

“Notwithstanding the said deployment ban to Kuwait, cash remittances of OFWs coursed through the banking system may remain stable as the number of OFWs in Kuwait remains unchanged,” BSP Deputy Governor Francisco Dakila Jr. told The STAR.

Early this year, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) issued a resolution to effect a deployment bank for newly hired domestic workers to Kuwait over the death of Jeanelyn Padernal Villavende last month.

Dakila said latest available data from the POEA showed there are about 108,000 OFWs deployed in Kuwait as of 2017.

This, he explained, is only around 5.3 percent of the total OFW deployment of 2.04 million in 2017.

There is no data on the breakdown of the types of OFWs deployed in Kuwait, such as household workers.  

On the other hand, data from the central bank showed that remittances from OFWs based in the Middle East slipped by 7.8 percent to $5 billion from January to October last year compared to $5.43 billion in the same period in 2018.

This is equivalent to 20 percent of the total remittances of $24.86 billion during the 10-month period last year.

Saudi Arabia was the major source of remittances from overseas Filipinos with $1.78 billion, followed by the United Arab Emirates with $1.36 billion, Kuwait with $625.95 million, Qatar with $625.06 million, Bahrain with $267.73 million, and Oman with $175.28 million.

The BSP data showed the top five sources of remittances during the 10-month period are the US with $9.35 billion or a share of 37.6 percent to total, followed by Saudi Arabia with $1.78 billion or 7.2 percent, Singapore with $1.57 billion or 6.3 percent, Japan with $1.4 billion or 5.6 percent and UAE with $1.36 billion or 5.5 percent.

Last Friday, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said the government may declare a total ban on the deployment of OFWs to Kuwait in the wake of the questionable autopsy report released by the Kuwaiti government on the death of Villavende late last month.

Bello deplored the results of the initial autopsy in Kuwait, noting that it highly contradicted the re-autopsy conducted by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).