Philippines Says June Remittances Rise 30% to Record

By Karl Lester M. Yap and Francisco Alcuaz Jr.

Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Remittances from Philippine citizens working overseas rose at the fastest pace in 14 months in June as more people found jobs as nurses, seamen and engineers abroad.

Money sent back to the Philippines jumped 30 percent from a year earlier to $1.5 billion, the highest since records began in 1989, the central bank said in a statement in Manila today. Remittances grew 15.6 percent in May.

Remittances, equivalent to about 10 percent of the $118 billion economy, are helping sustain consumer spending as the fastest inflation in more than 16 years erodes household incomes. Filipinos may be sending more money home after an 8.8 percent decline in the peso this year boosted foreign-currency earnings.

``There are more workers going abroad and they're higher skilled,'' said Luz Lorenzo, an economist at ATR-KimEng Securities Inc. in Manila. Filipinos overseas may be accelerating remittances because ``they expect the dollar to weaken again. They can't hedge but they can time'' when they send funds home.

The number of Filipinos who got jobs overseas rose 33.5 percent to 640,401 in the first six months of the year, the central bank said today. The Philippine unemployment rate was 8 percent in April, the highest after Indonesia in the Asia- Pacific region, according to Bloomberg data.

Slowing global growth may limit jobs abroad as companies lay off workers and freeze expansion, reducing the amount of money expatriates can send home in the coming months. Half of the Philippines' remittances come from the U.S., where tumbling home prices, mounting job losses and credit restraints are threatening growth.

Doctors, Nurses

Philippine remittance growth in 2008 may slip to about half of last year's 13.2 percent pace as the global economy cools, the Asian Development Bank said in March.

Still, ``Philippine workers aren't in the sectors that are weak,'' said Lorenzo. ``Filipinos are usually teachers, nurses, doctors, caregivers. They're relatively recession-resistant.''

Funds sent home by the more than 8 million Filipinos living abroad climbed 17.2 percent to $8.2 billion in the first half of 2008 from a year earlier.

To contact the reporter on this story: Karl Lester M. Yap in Manila at Kyap5@bloomberg.net;