Facts About the Philippines

The Philippines is an archipelago located in Southeast Asia (longitude: 122° 00 E and  latitude: 13° 00 N ). It is surrounded by water comprising 7,107 islands and islets. On the  east is the Pacific Ocean, on the west is South China Sea. SeePhilippine Map. The northernmost group of islands in the Philippines is Batanes which is only 190 kilometers from Taiwan, while the southernmost island of Tawi-Tawi, is a mere 60 kilometers away from Borneo.

Official Name: Republica ng Pilipinas | Republic of the Philippines

Land area: 115,830 square miles or 300,000 square kilometers. The total land area of the Philippines is comparable in size to Italy.

Highest peak: Mt. Apo in the island of Mindanao is 2,954 meters or 9,691 feet above sea level.

Climate: Tropical with 2 distinct seasons: wet and dry.

Dry season: from November to May

Wet season: from June to October

Average year round temperature: 27° Celsius / 81° Fahrenheit

Population: 94.6 million as of April 2012

Currency: Peso (PHP) Philippine Peso Currency Converter for the latest exchange rates.

Peso Denominations: 1,000; 500; 100; 50; 20; 10; 5; 2; 1; 0.50; 0.25; 0.10; 0.05; 0.01

Official Languages: Pilipino (Filipino) and English

Capital City: Manila (Metro Manila is the National Capital Region or NCR)

The National Capital Region comprises the cities and municipalities of: the City of Manila, Caloocan City, Las Piñas, Makati, Malabon, Mandaluyong, Marikina, Muntinlupa, Navotas, Parañaque City, Pasay City, Patros, Pasig, San Juan, Taguig, Quezon City and Valenzuela.

Form of Government: Republic with three (3) equal branches of government namely: the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary.

Chief Executive & Head of Government: The President. The Executive branch include the Cabinet comprising of Secretaries of each Department.

Legislative: Congress of the Philippines comprising of the Senate (upper house) presided by the President of the Senate and the House of Representatives (lower house) presided by the Speaker of the House of representatives.

Judiciary: Supreme Court of the Philippines comprising the Chief Justice and 14 Associate Justices, the Court of Appeals, Sandiganbayan, and the lower courts.

More Facts & Trivia About the Philippines

There are more than 10 million Filipinos living overseas, of this, about 8 million are OFWs or Overseas Filipino Workers of which around 1.5 million are contractual workers. According to the Central Bank of the Philippines , overseas Filipinos remitted a record high of US$ 18.76 billion to the Philippines in 2010, a 8.2% increase compared to 2009. The bulk of the remittances comes from the U.S., Canada, Saudi Arabia, U.K., Japan, U.A.E., Italy, Singapore and Germany. These OFW remittances account for roughly 10% of the country's GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

Dr. Jose Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines can read and write at the age of 2. He grew up speaking 20 foreign languages including French, Greek, Chinese, Latin and German.

The karaoke is a Filipino invention, not Japanese. Karaoke meaning "singing without accompaniment" in Japanese was invented by Roberto del Rosario. He called his invention "Sing-Along-System", which was later called karaoke.

The Philippine flag is the only flag in the world that is displayed upside-down when the country is in war (red on top and blue at the bottom when in war).

The Philippines is considered the "text capital of the world". In 2006, there were an estimated 35 million cell phone subscribers in the Philippines and about 350 to 400 million SMS (Short Message Service) or text messages are sent daily. This figure was more than the total daily text messages sent in the U.S. and Europe combined. However, China has overtaken the Philippines by sheer volume of users. It is estimated that in 2007, the Chinese sent an average of 1.6 billion text messages daily with more than 500 million cell phone users. While Filipinos sent an average of a billion text messages daily with about 50 million cell phone users. Even though the Chinese sent more text messages in total, they send an average of only 3 text messages per cell phone per day, while Filipinos sends on average 20 text messages per cell phone user per day. 

Although the land area of the Philippines is roughly 1/30th of the United States, The Philippines has a total coastline of 36,289 kilometers while the total U.S. coastline is a modest 19,924 kilometers.

The world's rarest and most expensive seashell, the "Conus Gloriamaris" is among the 12,000 species of seashells found in the Philippines. And 488 coral species out of the known 500 coral species worldwide are found in the country.