The Philippine Peso Just Hit Its Worst Level Ever. Remittances Hit a Record High the Same Week.
In March 2026, the Philippine peso closed at its worst level in history, P59.87 to the US dollar, with an intraday low of P59.95. The same week, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas released data showing cash remittances from overseas Filipino workers reached an all-time high for 2025, totaling $35.63 billion, up 3.3% from the previous record set the year before.
Those two facts sitting side by side tell a story about how millions of Filipino households experience currency movements very differently from how economists discuss them. A weaker peso means every dollar sent home by an overseas worker converts into more pesos, which sounds like good news for receiving families. But the same currency weakness is being driven by rising oil prices following the Middle East conflict, and the Philippines depends almost entirely on imported oil. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared a national energy emergency in March, noting the country had just 45 days of fuel supply remaining at the time.
January 2026 alone saw $3.02 billion in remittance inflows, a 3.5% increase year on year, even as the peso was setting new record lows. The United States remains the largest source of these flows at nearly 40% of the total, followed by Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Japan.
There is an added complication. January 2026 marked the first full month under a new 1% US tax on cash-based remittance transfers, part of a broader piece of legislation signed in mid 2025. The Philippines Department of Finance estimates this will reduce annual remittance inflows by roughly $100 million, a small percentage of GDP overall but a meaningful loss for families in provinces that depend heavily on these transfers for daily expenses.
The broader silver lining is that the remittance to GDP ratio has been quietly declining for years, from over 9% in 2022 to around 7.3% in 2025, which economists describe as a sign the domestic economy is creating enough jobs to reduce reliance on money sent from abroad. For now, households are managing record remittance inflows against record fuel prices and a record weak currency all at once.
