Saturday 30 June 2007

Philippines: Thanks, but no thanks

IT is good of the President to direct Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Romulo L. Neri to find ways to help millions of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) cope with the increasingly painful impact of the strengthening peso on their families’ pocketbooks.
Finally, officials have seen the irony of the OFWs’ situation: as recently pointed out in a front-page story in this paper, the more dollars they remit home, the bigger the gap that has to be filled in their families’ usual budget—given that with the peso appreciating in the flood of dollars, their dollar earnings here fetch an increasingly lower peso equivalent.
A couple of OFW dependents interviewed for that Associated Press story said that in a matter of a few months, the difference in the peso equivalent of the dollars sent home by their OFW loved ones had reached P3,000 to P5,000. To make up for that decline, some OFWs have thus had to remit more, thus perpetuating the cycle. [Read more]

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