MANILA, March 7(Xinhua)-- The remittances from overseas Filipino workers(OFWs) would increase more than expectation this year with the view of better economy performance in the United States, said a central bank report released on Monday.

The central bank said that beyond the earlier official 6 percent target, the OFW remittances could expand at least 10 percent in 2005.

The bank attributed that expected growth to the improvements inthe US economy despite the Bush administration's accumulating deficit, which would be good for expatriate labor.

Central Bank Governor Rafael Buenaventura said that the Middle East countries with the oil industry would also continue to draw a significant number of OFWs and, if the situation in Iraq stabilizes, the Philippiens could resume sending workers to that part of the Middle East.

Buenaventura said, however, that it might be hard to grow faster than last year's 11.8 percent growth rate which brings the total remittances to 8.5 billion US dollars.

The continued rise in OFW remittances from the comparable period last year was due to the growing demand for Filipino workers abroad and the seasonal transfers for the holiday season, the bank said.

The growth was also resulted from the aggressive marketing by commercial banks that have been competing vigorously for increasedshares in the remittance business from OFWs deployed in the world's major labor markets.

The bank forecast that the United States, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, China's Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates would continue to be major sources of remittance.