Personal remittances from Overseas Filipinos (OFs) amounted to $2.4 billion in February 2017, posting a year-on-year increase of 3.3 percent.

This resulted to a total of $4.8 billion remittance inflows for January to February, representing 5.9 percent growth from the previous year’s level, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Officer-in-Charge Nestor Espenilla, Jr. announced Monday.

Personal remittances from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more registered an increase of 9.1 percent (at $3.8 billion), while transfers from sea-based and land-based workers with work contracts of less than one year declined by five percent (at US$0.9 billion) compared to the same period a year ago.

Cash remittances of OFs coursed through banks reached $2.2 billion in February 2017, higher by 3.4 percent than the level posted a year ago.

More than three-fourths (at $1.7 billion) of this was sent by land-based workers while less than a quarter (at $0.5 billion) was sent by sea-based workers.

The United States, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan were the major contributors to the growth in cash remittances in February.

The 12.8 percent growth in remittances from the United States contributed 3.9 percentage points to the overall growth in cash remittances.

Meanwhile, remittances from the UAE, Qatar, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan, which grew by 23.7 percent, 53.5 percent, 17.5 percent, 64.4 percent and 11.3 percent, respectively, contributed a combined 5.5 percentage points to the total growth in cash remittances.

These were partially offset by the decline in remittances from Hong Kong, Canada, China and Kuwait which contributed a combined negative 5.1 percentage points to the total growth in cash remittances.

On a year to date basis, cash remittances for the first two months of 2017 totalled $4.3 billion, up by 5.9 percent compared to the same period last year.

Cash remittances from land-based workers rose by 9.1 percent (to $3.5 billion) compensating for the decrease by 5.0 percent in sea-based workers transfers (to $0.9 billion).

Almost 80 percent of the cash remittances inflows during the period came from the United States, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Singapore, United Kingdom, Japan, Qatar, Kuwait, Hong Kong and Australia. DMS