MANILA, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- The Central Bank of the Philippines said on Friday that personal remittances from Overseas Filipinos Workers (OFWs) amounted to 2.6 billion U.S. dollars in July.
It was an 8.7 percent year-on-year increase, bringing the total remittances from January to July 2017 to 17.9 billion U.S. dollars, or an increase of 5.9 percent from the same period in 2016.
On a year-to-date basis, cash remittances posted 5.0 percent growth, reaching 16.1 billion U.S. dollars in January to July 2017.
Central Bank officer-in-charge Diwa Guinigundo said cash remittances from both land-based and sea-based workers summed up to 12.8 billion U.S. dollars and 3.3 billion U.S. dollars, respectively.
Cash remittances coming from the United States, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Singapore, Japan, Britain, Qatar, Kuwait, Germany and China's Hong Kong comprised about 80 percent of total cash remittances in the first seven months of 2017, he said.
"The sustained increase in OFW remittances was supported by stable demand for skilled Filipino workers abroad," Guinigundo said.
Preliminary data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration showed that for the period January-July 2017, the total number of deployed OFWs reached 1,222,003.
