MANILA -- The Bureau of Treasury is looking to offer retail dollar bonds to overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) by the end of September, an official said on Tuesday.

National Treasurer Rosalia de Leon said the offering is an opportunity for OFWs to invest.

“Part of our financing for this year is to reach out and make our government securities available to our overseas Filipinos. So we are now going to issue our second leg of our retail dollar bonds. We’ve been issuing the fixed income Peso bonds, so this time around, to cater to our overseas Filipinos,” de Leon said during the Philippine Economic Briefing in Dubai.

To encourage investments, retail dollar bonds availed by OFWs will be exempted from the 20 percent withholding tax.

The RDB will have a tenor of five years.

For Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno, investing in retail dollar bonds will be beneficial for its investors and the government.

“If you have young kids who you will send to school at some point in the future, five years from now, that’s a good investment. So we are going to float this kind of money so that our overseas Filipino workers can invest and the money we can use for infrastructure," he said.

"And so they will be helping themselves. And they will be helping the country buildings infrastructure,” he explained.

The Philippine economic team is set to hold financial literacy campaigns to OFWs in Dubai to promote the retail dollar bonds.

Hundreds of thousands of OFWs are employed in the United Arab Emirates, making it the second largest employer of Filipino workers abroad.

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