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i-REMIT Inc. on Thursday announced that the volume of remittances it
handled rose by more than a third last year on the back of higher
overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) money sent home during the
Christmas season.
The country’s largest Filipino-owned nonbank
remittance company said in a statement that it handled transactions
valued at more than $762.3 million, a 37.2-percent increase over the
$555.6 million in 2006.
The total number of transactions handled reached
1.86 million, or an increase of 34.8-percent year on year.
“The year-end increases in volume and value
were driven by the company’s strong fourth quarter which is
traditionally the best performing quarter of the year due to
increased remittances during the holiday season,” Harris D.
Jacildo, i-Remit president and chief operating officer said.
He said that the company recorded 187,894
transactions valued at more than $79.2 million for the month of
December alone. “The transaction volume and value for December is
the best single-month performance in our history,” he said.
“This is the fifth consecutive year of growth
in terms of volume and value of remittances handled by the
company,” Jacildo said adding that the company hopes to sustain
this upward trend especially as it steps up expansion following its
initial public offering.
i-Remit, which is listed at the Philippine Stock
Exchange, has a presence in 25 countries across North America,
Europe, Australia, the Pacific Isles and the Middle East.
In December, i-Remit opened its branches in the
Marshall Islands and a new branch in Australia located in Liverpool,
New South Wales.
Jacildo also said that i-Remit continued to
outperform the market, pointing out the company’s annual growth is
higher than the projected growth in total remittances from overseas
Filipinos for last year.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said recently
that it projects remittances to end 2007 at $14 billion, a
9.3-percent growth from the $12.8-billion inflows recorded in 2006.
-- Darwin G. Amojelar
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