‘OFWs, BPO, exporters big winners with weaker peso’

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MANILA – A party-list lawmaker representing overseas Filipino workers in Congress said on Saturday that the recent decline of the peso to an 11-year low is favorable to OFWs, business process outsourcing sector, and exporters.

“Biggest winners of the sliding peso against the dollar are obviously the exporters and the overseas Filipinos,” ACT-OFW Paty-list representative Aniceto Bertiz III said in a statement.

“Overseas Filipinos and their dependents here in the Philippines are very happy that they are getting more pesos for every dollar they earn and send back home. The exporters and business process outsourcing sectors are also very happy because they get more pesos for each dollar they earn,” Bertiz said.

The lawmaker, however, said the big losers are the importers of goods and raw materials and the country’s gross international reserves, which will decrease and would directly affect mainly dollar-denominated foreign debts.

“The decline of peso forex in the last decade is a big concern to business and to our domestic economy. It has to be seen on a holistic view taking into consideration the effects to all stakeholders,” Bertiz said.

However, the lawmaker said that the Philippine economy has been strong since the 1990s.

In December 2006, the Philippines exited from the close watch of the debt program of the International Monetary Fund.

“The country has been lending to other countries, though in small amounts, since 2011. We are nowhere near the foreign exchange crises of the 1970s and 1980s,” Betiz added.

“Congress reformed and empowered the Bangko Sentral over the past three decades. We have one of the best central banks in the world,” he added.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) “is in firm control of the exchange rate,” according to BSP governor Nestor Espenilla Jr.

Espenilla even said the P51:$1 level allows the local currency “to gain some of the price competitiveness we have lost due to the strong peso of recent periods.” (GMA News)
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