ABSTRACT
In its four decades of experience with large-scale international labour migration, the Philippine government has extensively benefited from an estimated 9.5 million contracted emigrants (CFO 2011). Remittances in the year 2012 alone contributed more than USD $21 billion in cash to the Philippine economy (BSP 2013). In fact, remittances have unfailingly constituted approximately 10 per cent of the Philippines’ GDP and are considered to be crucial for the health of the national economy (Le Borgne 2009). Indeed, a Moody’s Analytics economist concludes, ‘the Philippines has been fortunate that remittances from offshore workers have so far held up’ in the subsiding ripples of the global Great Recession (Larano 2012). Moreover, a recent World Bank report (Sirkeci et al. 2012) suggests that the country (and likewise all states benefiting from a large overseas working population) should adopt measures to set up remittances as a permanent pillar of economic policy. It has been suggested that the spillover from remittances has contributed to keeping an additional 2.5 million Filipinos out of poverty (Pernia 2008; Yang 2004).
