MANILA (AFP) - A huge overseas workforce sent nearly a billion dollars in cash to their families in the Philippines in January, up 16.5 percent from a year earlier, the central bank said Wednesday.
January remittances reached $ 917 million, compared to $ 787 million in the same month last year, central bank governor Amando Tetangco said in a statement.
"Information gathered from commercial banks indicates an increasing amount of remittances used for direct payments of investments in Philippine assets," he added.
These banks are also improving services to meet the financial service requirements of families who have relatives working abroad, Tetangco said.
"The impact of these positive developments more than compensated for the dampening impact of decreased deployment" of Filipino workers to 98,971 in January, when the number of deployed land-based overseas workers fell 9.8 percent to 77,931.
Foreign-based Filipinos remitted a record 10.7 billion dollars last year.
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