The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is expecting remittances to the Philippines to grow this year as labor demand remains strong despite the global economic crisis.

"It's possible to see better than zero growth for remittances this year if the trend that we have seen in the first two months plus indications of sustained demand for Filipino labor continue," BSP Governor Amando Tetangco told reporters on Wednesday.

Last month, the International Monetary Fund said remittances to the Philippines are likely to decline by 7.1 percent this year, with consumption seen to grow slower by 2.7 percent.

Tetangco, however, said remittances won't be as hard-hit by the crisis with the continued increase in the deployment of workers abroad.

The growth of remittance inflows reached 4.9 percent in February this year, a slight recovery from the near-flat growth of 0.1 percent in the previous month. The BSP is set to release its remittance data for March on Friday.

The BSP is banking on high deployment of overseas Filipino workers (OFW) for the continued hike in remittances. But the Philippine Association of Service Exporters Inc. earlier reported that job orders for OFWs have slowed down this year, with 70 of their 700 recruitment agencies already shut down.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Agency counts OFWs who are newly hired for a job and those who are re-hired for the same job in their deployment data. Newly-hired OFWs do not usually send money home on their first few months, so there tends to be a lag between their deployment and remittances attributed to them. With a report from Reuters