February 22 ----- Filipino sailors aboard foreign merchant ships sent home via bank wire a record $4.340 billion in 2011, an increase of $534 million or 14 percent versus the $3.806 billion they remitted in 2010, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) said.

Remittances from seafarers advanced nearly three times faster compared to the cash inflows from land-based migrant Filipino workers in 2011, according to TUCP president and former Sen. Ernesto Herrera. Herrera said the US currency’s depreciation meant that every dollar sent home by sailors produced fewer pesos.  Based on Bangko Sentral ng Piliinas (BSP) data, the peso averaged 43.31 to a dollar in 2011 compared to 45.11 in 2010. Thus, every dollar yielded 4.15 percent less pesos last year. The peso closed Friday at 42.61 to a dollar. TUCP has been pushing for the foreign deployment of sailors, nurses and other surplus skilled workers.

The Philippines has been the world’s chief supplier of sailors since 1987. Some 375,000 Filipinos comprise one-fourth of the estimated 1.5 million merchant mariners worldwide. The $534-million jump in remittances from sailors accounted for 40 percent of the cumulative increase in cash transfers from all Filipino workers abroad, based both on land and sea, last year.

Source: mb.com.ph