BSP: Pinoys abroad sent home $2.4B in April

Personal remittances from overseas Filipinos rose by 3.8 percent year-on-year to $2.4 billion in April, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported Wednesday.

Personal remittances are money transfers that did not pass through formal channels like banks.

Alvin Ang, economics professor at Ateneo De Manila University, said the increase in money transfers by overseas Filipinos might push the full year remittances to P28 billion or "higher than expected."

The BSP is forecasting remittances to reach $26 billion for the whole of 2016.

In January to April, personal remittances from overseas Filipinos totaled $9.6 billion, up 3 percent from a year earlier.

The money sent by land-based workers with a working contract of one year or more amounted to $7.3 billion in the first four months.

Cash remittances coursed through banks amounted to $8.7 billion, up 3.1 percent.

"The sustained demand for OFWs continued to provide support to the growth of remittance inflows," said BSP Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. in a statement.

Preliminary data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) showed 777,887 contracts were processed in the first four months of the year.

More than 75 percent of cash remittances came from the US, Saudi Arabi, UAE, Singapore, UK, Japan, Qatar, Hong Kong, Kuwait, and Germany, the central bank noted. – VDS, GMA News