ADVOCACY groups are urging government, financial, and education institutions to address the lack of financial literacy amid the massive shift to digital platforms to enable monetary transactions to cope with the prolonged health and economic crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
CitizenWatch Philippines convenor Tim Abejo, in a statement, said that digital and financial literacy are essential to empower the Filipino work force amid the lockdowns that have been recurrent for more than 19 months now.
“With the pandemic’s devastating effects on our lives, livelihood, and the economy in general, only digital solutions will help our workers cope with the changes and challenges of our time. These would make them survive, and eventually thrive, in the next normal,” Abejo said.
“However, the lack of financial literacy will deprive our work force the opportunity to safely invest their hard-earned money and will be stuck in a vicious cycle of laboring long and hard to catch up with the growing cost of living,” Abejo added.
The 2019 Financial Inclusion Survey by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has shown that Filipino adults have little understanding of compounding interest and the effect of inflation on the buying power of households, more so on investment risks, returns, and diversification. It also showed that Filipinos scored low in terms of financial planning and even daily money management.
In a recent online forum on digital financial platforms for OFWs, Sen. Joel Villanueva, former director-general of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority and now chairman of two Senate committees on Labor, Employment, and Human Resources Development, as well as Higher, Technical and Vocational Education, stressed the close link between technology, financial literacy, and job empowerment.
Villanueva said overseas Filipino workers and their families must learn how to save, invest and set up their own businesses.
He pointed out that OFWs contribute 12 percent to the country’s national income and remit approximately P3 million pesos a day that can now be safely and conveniently done through digital remittance platforms.
