The Philippines Vice President Binay is supporting the call for the creation of an OFW Bank. The primary purpose of the bank is to help Filipino workers abroad save more money on the remittances they send home by charging less than existing commercial banks.
Currently, there have been complaints about commercial banks charging expensive remittance fee.
The government has seen this proposal advantageous as the OFW remittance grew by 7.9 percent in 2010 and is expected to grow by 8 percent this year.
The bulk of remittances came from the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the UK, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Italy, Germany and Norway.
