“We’re still hard up,” Quisel
tells the OFW Journalism Consortium and indicates
their one-bedroom house on a 70-square meter lot.
With the strengthening of the peso against the
American greenback, Quisel says she augments the
P9,000 her husband sends every month. “Much
of that takes care of our daily needs as well as
for the children’s schooling,” she explains.
Three of her six children are in school.
Scratch her out of the 1.4 percent of OFW households
who said they would buy a car or the 1.1 percent
who said buying a house is a spending priority.
These figures represent a poll of 2,526 Filipino
households in Metro Manila and 2,561 outside of
NCR surveyed by the BSP for the fourth-quarter consumer
expectations survey. The survey got responses from
2,445 households in Metro Manila and 2,524 from
the provinces, out of the targeted 5,087 respondents,
which represent all Filipino households. Some 469
of the total number of respondents to this first
nationwide consumer survey are OFW households, says
Winecito Tan of the BSP’s Department of Economic
Statistics.
And most of these households are saving than spending.
Indebted
The numbers also indicate that most OFW households
that save money are outside the NCR.
In addition, the year-end consumer survey figures
for OFW households show that 97.3 percent spend
their remittances on food and other household needs,
while 61.2 percent of the same households earmark
what they receive for education. Another 29.3 percent
say the money goes to medical expenses.
Repaying debts incurred to facilitate the overseas
migration of the household member is what some 34.0
percent of OFW households do.
With her debt out of the way and with her husband’s
remittance taking care of the family’s daily
needs, Quiles says she saves whatever it is she
makes from selling fish from Laguna Lake.
She has P3000 with the Kawayanan Bayanihan Multipurpose
Cooperative in Malinta village and faithfully makes
a deposit every week.
“Somehow, I have learned the habit of saving,”
she says, “and I have learned to set aside
some amounts from the daily expenses for my next
deposit.”
She also learned one other thing with Kawayanan:
“If you want to save, you have to work harder.
Boom
But data from property brokers like CB Richard
Ellis emphasize the notion that unlike the pre-Asia
financial crisis levels, OFWs are pushing market
demand.
In their presentation during the Asian International
Real Estate Expo and Conference in December, CBRE
said that foreign investors and local and foreign
end-users like OFWs and overseas Filipinos are the
drivers of the current property boom experienced
by the country.
Notably, as the percentage of OFW families that
save reached at least 17 percent of the surveyed
households, only 5.9 percent of these use their
incomes for investment. The figure was 5.2 percent
for OFW families in Metro Manila, and 6.6 percent
for provincial-based counterparts. If matched with
the BSP survey, these OFWs may be part of the high-
and middle- income groups polled.
But they are the minority in the survey.
The “low-income group” comprised 59
percent of the survey. These are families that earn
less than P10,000 a month.
Nearly 36 percent of the total 4,952 respondent
households belong to the middle-income group (P10,000
to P29,999 a month) while five percent or 254 households
made up the high-income group (more than P30,000
a month).
Only the “high-income group” said their
optimism would run up to the next 12 months.
