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By Dave L. Llorito, Research Head and
Kristine R. Payuan, Researcher
1st of 3 parts
MUHAMMAD Mulis Amping, 48, immediately stood
up when his name was called for interview for a possible placement
as heavy equipment operator in Guantanamo, Cuba. The Americans were
building prison cells in Guantanamo for al-Qaida members captured in
the war in Afghanistan that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
in the United States. Thousands applied for job openings and Amping
was among those short-listed. After almost 18 years in Saudi Arabia
driving and operating all kinds of heavy equipment, he was confident
he would get the job.
“Cranes, crawlers, pavers, bulldozers, pay
loaders, heavy trucks, buses — I can handle all of them,” he
told his interviewers at the placement agency in Makati City as they
were going through his resumé.
“But when they learned that I was born in
Basilan and had a five-year stint with the Saudi Bin Laden Group,
they were stunned,” Amping recounts. “They immediately stopped
asking questions about my qualifications and gave me a hard,
suspicious look.”
“I explained to them that I was never a
terrorist nor was I connected to any of the terrorist groups, that
the Saudi Bin Laden Group was a huge business conglomerate in the
Middle East, that I have been a company driver since arriving home
from Saudi in 2001, but to no avail,” he says. “They told me to
just wait for further instructions. I knew right there I didn’t
get the job.”
Amping may be crestfallen, but he is not
desperate. With his earnings from his work overseas augmented by the
salary of his wife, a teacher, he was able to send all his three
children to college and buy some properties. His eldest son works in
Saudi Arabia as a computer technician, earning 2,000 rials (about
P28,000 or $533.334). The second child, a daughter, is a computer
programmer in a special economic zone in Batangas. And the youngest,
also a girl, is finishing dentistry.
“She has a year more to go,” Amping says.
“After that, she will also go to Saudi. Our eldest in Saudi is
sending her $200 a month to make sure she finishes her studies in
time. If worst comes to worst, we can always sell the land.”
The money sent home by overseas Filipino workers
(OFWs) like Muhammad Amping has been keeping the Philippine economy
afloat in the last two decades, helping it weather insurgencies,
coup attempts, floods, earthquakes and terrorist attacks.
From just about a billion dollars in 1989, OFW
remittances rapidly rose to almost $5 billion in 1995 and to $6-7
billion in the last few years. For 2002, OFW remittances are
expected to hit $8 billion.
The remittances go to paying to children’s
schooling; buying houses and lots; purchasing cellular phones,
appliances and vehicles; starting small businesses; and sustaining
the families’ daily food requirements and recreational needs.
A good part of the remittances went to personal,
medical, and health services as well as to vices and conspicuous
consumption. The $6-billion annual remittance could translate to
P312-billion worth of annual domestic demand for local and imported
products and services.
“The money regularly sent us by my daughter
helps us meet everyday expenses and all the basic necessities,”
says Eufemia Catimbang, 60, who lives in Town and Country Homes, a
middle-class subdivision in Dasmariñas, Cavite, and the mother of a
caregiver in Switzerland. “It also helped us pay for this house
and pay for the schooling of our youngest. It’s a sacrifice but it
seems to be the only way we can have a comfortable life.”
For some, the dollars from abroad allow them a
few luxuries. “With my husband’s income, we were able to send
our children to decent schools and manage to build a rest house in
Olongapo that we would otherwise not afford if he did not sacrifice
working abroad,” says Edna Rivera, 45, resident of Concepcion,
Marikina, whose husband has been working for an international
shipping firm since the late ’70s. Her two sons are also seamen,
in South Korea.
Is the $6-7 billion remittance figure accurate?
Muhammad Amping says it’s not. “When I was in Saudi, many of us
sent our dollars through our trusted friends who were coming home to
save on bank charges. Some were through door-to-door services. These
are not probably monitored. The real figure is probably double that
amount.”
From January to August this year, total OFW
remittances reached $4.143 billion, up 43 percent from $2.892
billion for the same period last year. Fifty-eight percent of the
amount came from the United States; the rest came from Asia, Middle
East, and Europe, Africa, Oceania, and other countries. About 86
percent of the total amount is from land-based OFWs.
“The high percentage share from the US is
largely due to the fact that most of the remittances were carried
through American banks,” says Dr. Cielito F. Habito, an economist
and former director general of the National Economic and Development
Authority. “The actual amount of remittances from the US is
significant but it should not be that big.”
The importance of the dollar remittances to the
local economy could be gleaned from its first semester performance
in 2002 where the gross national production grew by 4.7 percent. The
national accounts shows that the Net Factor Income from Abroad (NFIA)
that measures the money sent home by overseas workers rose by 14
percent for that period due to increased deployment of land-based
and sea-based workers. As a result, NFIA says the percentage of the
GNP rose to 6.4 percent and contributed 0.9 percentage points to the
4.7-percent GNP growth rate in the first half of the year.
This contribution is as big as those from the
industry sector and even bigger than the 0.7 percentage point
contribution of the agriculture, fishery, and forestry sectors. In
1991, the NFIA as a percentage of GNP was only 0.51 percent. Since
then, its share steadily rose each year to reach 5.9 percent in
2001.
“OFW remittances bring in a lot purchasing
power,” says Habito. “It is a source of demand that stimulates
production domestically.”
Analyzing the national income accounts from the
expenditure side, one could see personal consumption expenditure has
expanded by 3.6 percent in the first half from its 3.4-percent
growth rate last year. The higher output is due to increased
spending on food and beverages, clothing and footwear, household
furnishings, household operations, transportation, communications,
and miscellaneous services.
This higher consumer spending has translated to
robust growth rates in the transportation and communications
sectors. These two sub-sectors accelerated to a 13.8-percent growth
rate in the first half from 8.3 percent in the same period last
year.
According to Carmelita S. Dimzon, director of
pre-employment services office of the Philippine Overseas Employment
Administration (POEA), the country’s labor export program
officially began with a deployment of 35,000 Filipino workers in
1975. Today there are 7.337 million OFWs worldwide, 97 percent of
whom are land-based.
Forty-two percent of all OFWs is in the Americas
and its trust territories, numbering 3.1 million. About two million
are in the United States; the rest are in Canada, trust territories
and other areas.
East and South Asia is the second biggest OFW
destination: 1.7 million or 23.32 percent of the total. Malaysia
hosts the biggest number — 585,511 OFWs. The rest are almost
evenly spread in various countries like Brunei, Hong Kong, Japan,
Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and others.
West Asia, composed of Middle Eastern countries
like Bahrain, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
United Arab Emirates, is the third largest destination, accounting
for 15.4 percent (1.3 million workers). More than half of the 1.3
million workers in the Mideast are in Saudi Arabia, numbering more
than 626,000.
Europe is fourth, hosting 845,388 Filipino
workers or 11.5 percent. The favorite destinations are Italy
(186,679), Spain (77,537), Greece (68,283), and the United Kindom
(54,769). The rest are distributed to Austria, France, Germany,
Netherlands, Switzerland, and other European countries.
Long-term historical data is not available but
based on the 1998-2001 figures from POEA, OFWs come mainly from the
National Capital Region (particularly Manila, Quezon City, and
Caloocan); Southern Tagalog (particularly Rizal, Batangas, and
Laguna); Central Luzon (particularly Bulacan, Pampanga, and Nueva
Ecija); Ilocos (particularly Pangasinan); and Cagayan Valley (mainly
Isabela and Cagayan).
“Initially, the overseas employment program
was conceived as a stop-gap measure during the time of President
Ferdinand Marcos,” says Dimzon. “It was meant to be a temporary
program to abate the problem of employment then. We sent them abroad
because they don’t have jobs here.”
Marcos was concerned that high unemployment
could lead to restiveness that could destabilize his dictatorship.
“Insurgency then was a major problem,” says
Dimzon. “But the stop-gap measure really evolved into a permanent
program because of the dollar remittances that these workers are
bringing back home.”
Part 2
| Conclusion
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