800,000 workers deployed abroad

Total for first 10 months higher than in 2004 Remittances of OFWs up by 28 percent

By RAUL V. GONZALES

Over 800,000 overseas Filipino workers have been deployed to more than 170 destinations worldwide in the first 10 months of 2005, the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) said yesterday.

Labor and Employment Acting Secretary Manuel G. Imson said that government figures showed that a total of 804,713 documented OFWs were deployed from January 1 to November 1, 2005 or 7,496 higher than the 797,217 deployed in the same period in 2004.

"Records showed that land-based OFWs totaling 597,028 comprised some three-fourths of the total 804,713 OFWs deployed, with the overseas Filipino seafarers comprising the other one-fourth (207,685)," Imson said.

Imson affirmed Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) figures indicating that the OFWs remitted to the country more than US$7.003 billion in the first eight months of 2005, representing a 28.02 percent growth from the $5.5 billion remitted in the same period in 2004.

Imson said the remittances were boosted by the deployment of skilled, higher-paid OFWs worldwide such as seafarers, service staff, professional/technical personnel and production related workers.

"These remittances, as validated by our Bangko Sentral, comprise a crucial component of the Philippines’ national income accounts and the balance of payments, and for the first semester of 2005 alone, accounted for a significant portion of the nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reaching some eleven percent."

Earlier, Imson said that Labor and Employment Secretary Patricia A. Sto. Tomas had affirmed the findings of the Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM) report to United Nations (UN) Secretary General Koffi Annan that showed the Philippines’ documented migration should serve as a model for the world.

"The Philippine system stands, possibly, as the best available in the world. Ours may be denominated best as the effective management of contract migration. I would like to offer the Philippine case as an example of a national effort to manage migration and move within GCIM principles," Sto. Tomas said.

Imson said the top 20 OFW destinations during the first semester of 2005 were the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (which hired/rehired 112,295 OFWs), Hong Kong (54,477), the United Arab Emirates (43,970), Japan (32,210), Taiwan (27,151), Kuwait (20,945), Qatar (15,672), Singapore (16,444), Italy (12,123), the United Kingdom (11,078), Lebanon (7,255), Bahrain (5,560), Brunei (5,213), South Korea (5,002), Malaysia (3,868), Ireland (3,696), Israel (3,509), the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (3,350), Libya (2,928), and China (2,853).

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