Overseas remittances have a direct and positive effect on recipient household incomes and reduce poverty, at least while they are received. Remittances selfevidently increase household incomes, purchasing power and consumption. The NSO's October 2008 SOF produced estimates of OFW remittances to households by major occupation group in the April-September 2008 period. It found that laborers and unskilled workers (18.8% of OFWs) remitted an average of P6,333 per month, clerks (5.1o/o of OFWs) P9,833, service workers and shop and market sales workers (13.5% of OFWs) P10,767 , trades and related workers (17 .4% of OFWs) Pl1,000, plant and machine operators and assemblers (15.0% of OFWs) P11,833, and technicians and associate professionals (8.1% of OFWs) P13,667. To put this into context, the minimum wage in the National Capital Region (NCR) computed on a monthly basis currently stands atPll,620 (at a daily wage of P382). This implies that some 54.7% of OFWs are working abroad as laborers and unskilled workers, clerks, service workers and shop and market sales workers, and trades and related workers to be able to remit back even less than the NCR minimum wage. Meanwhile another 23.1% working as plant and machine operators and assemblers and as technicians and associate professionals are sending back only a little more than the NCR minimum wage. At the household level there are benefits from investments in social capital ensuring education and improving health through better diets and health care - which have potentially far-reaching social and economic benefits for the households concerned. The BSP's 2"d quarter CES noted that96.2% of OFW households used remittances to pay for food, 68.2% for education expenses and 62.4Yo for medical expenses. The same survey found,25.9%o of OFW households buy-g appliances and other consumer durables, while only 10.8% were spending on purchase of houses and only 7.0%o on cars or motor vehicles. Just some 8.302 responded that they were spending on investments. Overseas remittances are also an important source of foreign exchange and purchasing power at the macroeconomic level. They are regarded as significantly contributing to a country's foreign exchange resources and boosting overall consumption spending as well as, to some degree, investments in real estate. Even as there is little reason to expect that saving rates of OFW households will be any different from the generally low savings rates of households in the country the large amounts of remittances overall have prompted various efforts to leverage at least a portion of these as development finance'such as OFW bonds, in philanthropy, for community investment projects and others. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) recorded US$16.4 billion in remittances in 2008. This was much larger than net foreign direct investment (US$1.52 billion) and far outstripped net exports of goods and services (US$ 1 1 . I billion deficit) for the year, also according to BSP data. Remittances were also higher than foreign aid disbursed (US$ 1.05 billion, according to the National Economic and Development Authorrty) and the increase in government foreign debt stock (US$1.78 billion, according to the Bureau ofthe Treasury). t6