MANILA, Philippines — Remittances from overseas Filipinos amounted to $13.02 billion in the first nine months of 2011, up 6.9 percent year-on-year, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Monday reported.

Fund transfers through official bank channels and monitored by the BSP totaled $1.67 billion for August alone, up 11.1 percent year-on-year but compared to the previous month or in July, the monthly tally was lower by 2.4 percent. It was the first time remittances climbed at a double-digit pace this year, the central bank said.

The BSP is revising its external account projections for this year. The forecast for remittances this year is $20.1 billion and $21.1 billion for 2012.

Remittances from sea-based OFWs increased by 14.4 percent from 14 percent in July while cash from land-based OFWs went up by five percent from 4.3 percent in the previous month. Majority of cash transfers were sent from the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Japan, United Kingdom, Singapore, United

Arab Emirates, Italy, Norway, and Germany. These countries of source contributed 84.9 percent of total remittances.

According to the BSP, remittance inflows continue to be ‘solid and resilient’ because demand for Filipino workers and professionals continues to grow.

In the BSP statement, it quoted statistics from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) that the number of processed orders for new employment increased by 8.6 percent for January to September to 193,176.

These job orders are for production, service, professional, and technical workers in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, Qatar, Kuwait, and Hong Kong, among others.

The said the POEA is confident that new batches of licensed Filipino nurses are bound for Japan in the next 12 months as part of the Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement or JPEPA.

The central bank reiterates that the sustained demand abroad for Filipino workers as well as the diversity of their skills and destinations have contributed to the resilience of remittance flows even with the lingering uncertainties on the Middle East and North Africa region's political situation and the US and Eurozone debt crisis.

The growth in remittances is also supported by increased capture of money transfers that was made possible with the expanded offering of financial products and services to overseas Filipinos by banks and other financial institutions that have established more tie-ups with foreign service providers.