Philippines Information

Links to Philippines Information

CAI Art Gallery: CAI Art Gallery is proud to present the work of contemporary Cebuano artists.
Speak Tagalog: This is a tutorial for English speakers who want to learn to speak Tagalog with an emphasis on everday speech and street talk.
Filipino Home Page in Canada: A celebration of the Filipino culture in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Also features the Filipino Unity Newsletter.

Use soc.culture.filipino newsgroup to learn more about the Filipino culture.

About Philippines

Geography

Philippines is located in south-east Asia between Indonesia and China. The country has a total area of 300,000 sq km, 298,170 sq km is on land and 36,289 km of coastline.

Philippines has a tropical marine climate - north-east monsoon from November to April and south-west monsoon from May to October. It is astride the typhoon belt and usually stuck by five to six cyclonic storms per year. The terrain is mostly mountainous with narrow to extensive coastal lowlands. Natural resources include timber, petroleum, nickel, cobalt, silver, gold, salt, and copper. The country has active volcanos.

People

Philippines has a total population of 68,464,368 (July 1993 est.). Nationals of Philippines are known as Filipino(s). The main ethnic group is the Christian Malays (91.5%) and the predominant religion is Roman Catholic (83%). The official languages are Filipino and English.

Government

The country's official name is Republic of the Philippines and in short, Philippines. This is a republic government. The capital is Manila. Independence was gained on 4 July 1946 from US. The national holiday Independence Day is 12 June (independence from Spain in 1898).

The country's flag consists of two equal horizontal bands of blue (top) and red with a white equilateral triangle based on the hoist side. In the center of the triangle is a yellow sun with eight primary rays (each containing three individual rays) and in each corner of the triangle is a small yellow five-pointed star.

Economy

Domestic output in this primarily agricultural economy remained the same in 1992 as in 1991. Drought and power supply problems hampered production, while inadequate revenues prevented government pump priming. Despite a flat GDP performance, GNP mustered a small 0.6% expansion, attributable to inflows of workers' remittances combined with smaller foreign interest payments. A marked increase in capital goods imports, particularly power generations equipment, telecommunications equipment, and electronic data processors, contributed to a 20.5% import growth in 1992. Exports rose 11%, led by earnings from the Philippines' two leading manufactures - electronics and garments.

Communications

Philippines has 378 km of railroads, 157,450 km of highways and 3,219 km of inland waterways. The ports are in Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, Davao, Guimaras, Iloilo, Legaspi, Manila and Subic Bay. There are about 240 (mostly small) airports.

There is good good international radio and submarine cable services. Domestic and interisland telecommunication service is adequate.