MANILA, Philippines – Migrant workers contributed a huge share in the country’s economy in 2018, according to a recent World Bank report.
Based on the World Bank’s April 2019 Migration and Development Brief, the Philippines received $33.8 billion dollars — the fourth biggest remittance from migrant workers in 2018.
India received the biggest remittance with $78.6 billion, followed by China with $67.4 billion, and Mexico’s $35.7 billion.
The World Bank noted that though remittances in 2018 increased by 3.1%, it was still lower than the 5.4% growth in 2017.
This pulled down the Philippines by one notch from its third place in 2017.
The World Bank explained that the decline in growth was due to “the significant drop of 15 percent in private transfers from the Middle East in 2018.”
Nonetheless, the World Bank sees the Japanese government’s new policy to hire foreign workers in the next five years, hiking remittance flows to the Philippines as well as to eight other priority countries, namely Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The World Bank noted that “migrant workers from said nine countries will be deployed to 14 sectors in Japan that have severe labor shortages.”
The Philippines has already signed a memorandum of cooperation with Japan in March 2019 on hiring Filipino workers expecting to fill about 100,000 of the open positions. – Marje Pelayo
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