500,000 OFWs dispatched in first half of 2005, says DOLE

First posted 03:16pm (Mla time) July 02, 2005
INQ7.net
by: Veronica Uy
http://news.inq7.net/breaking/index.php?index=1&story_id=42144


A TOTAL of 502,772 overseas Filipino workers have been deployed for the first half of the year, breaching the half a million mark of OFW deployment for the first time since the country started sending workers abroad, acting Labor Secretary Danilo Cruz said Saturday.

"We are confident that our goal to deploy a million OFWs globally continues on a firm and stable track," he said.

Citing reports from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), Cruz said the figure, noted as of June 26 this year, is 19,276 more than the 483,496 OFWs deployed in the same period last year.

Cruz said that with this development, the total OFW remittances to the Philippines could approach the 10-billion-dollar mark this year.

Earlier, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (Central Bank of the Philippines) reported that OFW remittances rose by a double-digit 17.22 percent to 3.072 billion dollars (around 170.9 billion pesos) from January to April 2005, compared to 2.621 billion dollars during the same period in 2004.