NGO plans US roadshows to tap OFW money

Manila Standard Today
April 29, 2005

NGO plans US roadshows to tap OFW money

By Dennis D. Estopace

Atikha Inc., a San Pablo City-based nongovernment organization, is tapping remittances of Filipinos in North America to fund small businesses of overseas Filipino workers (OFW) in 10 barangays of the Laguna city.

Securities and Exchange Commission-registered Atikha said the roadshows would be conducted in the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Washington in the United States of America, and Toronto and Vancouver in Canada.

Atikha executive director Mai Dizon Añonuevo, in a letter to Virginia-based group Feed the Hungry, said the roadshows would fund “an ambitious yet realizable project of a two-year campaign mobilizing overseas Filipino resources in the US and Canada for community development.”

“Based on feasibility and market studies, Atikha, together with the San Pablo City technical working group on enterprise development, will incubate sustainable, environment-friendly, community-based enterprises in 10 selected barangays,” Dizon Añonuevo said in the letter furnished the Manila Standard Today.

She added the campaign “seeks the philanthropic support and direct investment of overseas Filipinos.”

Dizon Añonuevo cited that “enterprises that are to be explored include organic farming, production of virgin coconut oil and other coconut products, ecotourism and retirement/ecofarm villages.”

The project, she added, is in cooperation with the city government of San Pablo City, Department of Trade and Industry and San Pablo City Chamber of Commerce and Industry, with the support of the Canadian International Development Agency. CIDA is the vehicle for official development aid (ODA) from Canada.

OFW remittances remain a major source of funds fueling the Philippine economy.

Atikha cited one study by the Asian Development Bank that said “overseas migration of Filipinos has not substantially contributed to the country’s economic development.”

The ADB recently announced a $500,000 research on the effective use of workers’ remittances in Southeast Asia.

“The impact of these remittances will be maximized if fund transfers are made easier and cheaper, and they are used for more productive investments,” an ADB statement quoted Emma Yang, its senior financial management specialist.

The ADB said official remittances of migrant workers from South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific accounted for 34 percent of the global total of $80 billion. It is estimated that half as much flows through informal channels.

The bank cited the 2003 World Bank Global Development Finance (WB-GDF) report which said remittances are now the second-largest source of external funding for developing countries, next only to foreign direct investments.

A more recent WB-GDF report, released this month, cited that $126 billion worth of remittances from 175 million migrant workers worldwide are now almost double the ODA level of $72 billion.

Data from government agency Philippine Overseas Employment Administration showed that 933,588 OFW were deployed last year — the highest recorded in the country’s three-decade-old overseas employment program. Government estimates that of the eight million Filipino migrant workers in 190 countries, some 1.2 million are in the US, mostly in the states of California, Florida and Hawaii.