What the heck is happening to the £?, just checked prior to sending some Christmas cash to the Philippines 65.19 peso to the pound, a couple of months ago it was 70+ to the pound, is the country in such a mess to make it fall so quickly ?.
This is traditional and pretty normal this time of year, it indicates that the Philippines is getting significant inbound remittances from OFW's and people like us in the run up to Christmas, it wasn't so bad for us last year but is also an indication that they are getting on top of their Covid problem. Now you could argue that given how badly affected the Philippine economy has been by Covid that the relative performance of GBP and PHP should have been wider i.e. we should have been getting better than 70 for a lot of this year and we would have had it not been for BREXIT and Covid as the Philippine economy has performed particularly poorly this last few years since Duterte took control. On the other hand part of the problem is the relative performance of the pound against USD, we are still quite strong against the EUR but we were at or over 1.40 USD to the pound a few months ago and now down to 1.32 and that is mostly markets fleeing to a safe reserve currency during the gas crisis and other recent instability in the global economy. A lot of it though is normal this time of year because of the inward remittance flows.
I also had to remit last week for Christmas I wanted to send the kids 50,000 peso for Christmas that's for James, Janna, Nanay and Dhang, it cost me about 30 quid more than it would have if I had been able to send it 2 months ago at a total of £761, I still have to send the normal monthly support this Friday but they are not under pressure to collect that from the bank right away as they have plenty for Christmas now.
Isn't this about which vehicle you send money through? Rates of course fluctuate, don't they? Why we may ask is the Peso rate so high? Could it be because China is active in the economy, extracting the nickel ..... literally from the mines
The peso isn't strong it's weak compared to 10 years ago, when I first went over there I could get 54 peso to the dollar, that was 17 years ago at that time I also got 106 peso to the pound (I foolishly bought some dollars before going my first time). China is putting the country in greater debt while no doubt getting more involved.
Most Filipinos though will look on these Duterte years as being the years of infrastructure - a lot of railways have been added
Yes and if the Chinese YUAN (currently 8.55 to the pound) was at its true level rather than a false low, then other companies might stand a chance of winning contracts, how the rest of the World has allowed the YUAN to remain so low i have never been able to understand, for the Worlds 2nd rated economy to continue to have such a low currency rate puts other countries at a big disadvantage.
Most of them had been in the planning for decades, the LRT southern extension was being planned more than 10 years ago, but it is certainly good that some of it has been implemented.
Whilst they were in planning, no president had implemented anything, until Duterte. What will Marcos do?
That was true 15 years ago, it is far less true now, in 2015 they spent a huge amount of their foreign reserves to support the value of the RMB and increasing international use of the RMB has caused it to strengthen. Also policy shifts towards internal economic consumption have pushed up the value. This graph does not say the RMB is getting weaker it says we're getting fewer RMB per pound i.e. it's getting stronger.
68.86 peso to the pound right now, a bit surprised to see the pound recover this early before the new year to be honest.
Nobody in their right mind buys currency before they travel to a country like the Philippines, every money changer in the UK will rip you off. Far better to take a debit card that will give you the interbank rate for quick cash from an ATM, but for changing decent amounts of money your will get a great rate in the airport when you arrive, I would bet that you could get 66.2 or slightly better in NAIA right now. And once there just remit to yourself if you need cash using the likes of WorldRemit and a Cebuana store for pickup and for purposes pay on either an interbank rate debit card or interbank rate credit card. I've only ever bought cash in advance once or twice when I hadn't taken at least 2000 out of the country on the previous trip, last trip I came home with 2360 which was a bit low for me but that was due to the cost of the taxi and trying to leave as much as possible for the kids until my next send.
