Five Times More Than The Investors Send

Almost every Filipino family has someone abroad. A tita in Dubai. A cousin on a ship. A parent you have mostly known through a phone.

I wanted to count them. I could not. So I counted what they send instead, and that turned out to say plenty.

The Size Of It

In 2025, Filipinos abroad sent home 41.56 billion US dollars.

That is 8.53 out of every 100 pesos the whole country produces in a year.

Here is the number that made me sit up. Foreign companies putting money into the Philippines — building factories, buying stakes, the thing governments chase — brought in far less. Remittances were 5.33 times bigger.

We hold conferences about attracting investment. Meanwhile, quietly, our relatives abroad send in five times more.

And it is worth 32.1 out of every 100 pesos of everything we sell to other countries. Nearly a third as much again, on top of all our exports.

The Line That Never Bends

Look at the chart of it over time. It goes up. And up. From 339.0 million dollars in 1977 to 41.56 billion now.

The interesting part is what is missing. There is no dip in 2008, when the world's banks fell over. There is no dip in 2020.

Investment money runs away when things go bad. That is what it does. But when things go bad at home, people abroad send more, not less. It is not investment. It is family.

A Number That Fell Without Shrinking

One thing I nearly got wrong.

Remittances as a share of the economy peaked at 12.78 out of 100 in 2005. Today it is 8.53.

That looks like decline. It is not. The dollars kept climbing the whole time — the economy just grew faster than they did.

The share going down is arguably good news. It means the country leans on this a little less than it used to.

Same Money, Different Meaning

I put us next to five other countries that receive a lot of remittances.

India gets 150.7 billion dollars. Nearly four times our amount.

But India is a much bigger country. For them it is 3.81 out of every 100 pesos-worth of their economy. For us it is 8.53.

So the same money means very different things. Theirs is a nice extra. Ours is load-bearing.

We come 2nd of 6 by that measure. Only Pakistan leans on it more.

What I Could Not Count

Here is the honest gap, and it is a big one.

I have the money. I do not have the people.

How many Filipinos work abroad. How many are women. How old they are. What jobs they do. Which countries they go to. Which provinces they leave.

All of that is collected. The migration department publishes it every year — as big PDF documents meant for reading, not for counting. And the statistics agency's website turns programs away entirely.

The old version of this page had all of those numbers on it. 2.19 million workers. 57.2 out of 100 women. A neat average sent per person.

None of it came from anywhere. And notice: you cannot work out an average per person without knowing how many people there are. So that number could not have been real either.

I took all of it off. What is left is smaller and it is true.