The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) reported a slight decline in the number of deployed overseas Filipino workers (OFW) abroad this year.
Citing the preliminary data, DOLE Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said the number of hired OFWs in other countries decreased to 1.53 million.
Baldoz, who heads POEA governing board, said this was 8.96 percent lower compared to the 1.69 million last year.
This comes despite the increase in the landbased OFWs, which rose to 1.36 million from 1.34 million in 2012.
Majority more than 900,000 of these OFWs were rehires, while new hires only accounted for 419,257.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia remained as the most popular destination for the landbased sector with 351,470 OFWs despite its attempts to nationalize its workforce.
It was followed by the United Arab Emirates with 236,797 and Singapore with 123, 358.
Meanwhile, Baldoz attributed the lower deployment figures to the performance of the seabased sector, which showed a sharp decline from 344,169 OFWs last year to only 176,392 this year.
POEA administrator Hans Cacdac said this was caused by the failure of some manning agencies to submit their deployment reports on time to POEA.
“We have a drop box system where some manning agents are a month delayed in reports. We expect to finalize the seabased data during the first quarter of 2014,” Cacdac said.
Baldoz said they expect the deployment figures to pick up next year as the country.
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