Facts About the Philippines
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Flag of the Philippines
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Official Name: Republica ng Pilipinas | Republic of the Philippines
Land area: 115,830 square miles or 300,000 square kilometers or 300,000,000 hectares. 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
Population: Estimated to have reached 108 million in 2019.
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.
It can be overwhelming to first timers, especially to tourist who can’t wait to leave Manila’s chaotic traffic, heat and pedestrians. But spend a little time and discover the little secrets of the city and the friendliness of the people.
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 and Under 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, of which around 2.2 million are contractual workers or OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers). According to the Central Bank of the Philippines, overseas Filipinos remitted a record high of US$ 33 billion to the Philippines in 2019. 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).
Poverty Incidence: According to the Statistical Coordination Board, Filipinos living at or below the poverty line as of 2018 is about 16.6% of the population or about 23.1 million.
The Philippines is classified as a "Newly Industrialized Country" (NIC). NICs are countries whose economy have outpaced their developing counterparts but have not yet reached the status of being a "Developed Country". See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newly_industrialized_country
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 small island province of Camiguin, having less than 92 square miles of land area, has 10 volcanoes. Making it the most volcano dense area per sq. miles in the world.
The world's largest pearl was found by a Filipino fisherman off the coast of Palawan, Philippines. The fisherman hid the irregular shaped pearl under his bed for 10 years for good luck and was only made public in 2016. It weighs 34 kilos and measures 12"x 24". It is known as "Pearl of Puerto" named after "Puerto Princesa", the capital of Palawan.
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.
The Philippine capital city of Manila is the world's most densely populated with 107,561 persons per square mile.
Manila's China Town, established in the 16th century, makes it the oldest China Town in the world.
The University of Santo Tomas in Manila, founded by Dominican monks in 1611, is the oldest university in Asia and the largest Catholic university in the world in terms of student population.
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