Hold your breath, money remittance experts said the Philippine peso continues to remain weak against the dollar – and consequently, the dirham – which means you have a really good chance to have more money this coming festive season to send home and tide you over the holidays.
“The Ph peso looks fundamentally weak and we are expecting it to depreciate further which is good news for Filipino expats as a weaker peso coupled with the forthcoming Christmas festive season will give them [Filipino expats] an opportunity to remit more money home,” Promoth Manghat, CEO of UAE Exchange Group told The Filipino Times in an exclusive interview.
“Although we have not seen much of a surge in the remittance volume so far, we expect to see an increase in the peso volume in the coming months,” Manghat added.
Sudhesh Giriyan, COO at Xpress Money made similar remarks, saying “the Philippine peso has lost some momentum against the dollar recently, and by extension, against the UAE dirham. For overseas Filipino workers (OFW) in the Gulf, this is good news because each dirham sent home buys more pesos.”
“We can expect overseas Filipinos to take advantage of the favorable exchange rates to send more money home,” he added.
Giriyan said recent figures from the Philippine Central Bank showed that global remittances to the Philippines have exceeded Dh76 billion ($20.69 billion) in the last eight months, with the UAE being a major contributor to that figure.
“We expect this positive remittance growth trend to continue given the current weakness of the peso against the dirham and other Gulf currencies,” Giriyan said.
The peso-dirham rate has been hovering at the P13.95 to P14.04 range in the past several weeks.
The peso value at end-October stood at P51.79 to the dollar, a loss of nearly P2 since the start of this year, Finance officials in the Philippines have noted.
