Philippine equities held their footing above the 6,000 level as caution continued to dominate trading, with analysts balancing global headwinds against pockets of domestic resilience.
The Philippines has emerged as ASEAN’s top tourism economy, leading the region in tourism’s contribution to gross domestic product and ranking among the strongest job creators, according to the 2025 World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) Economic Impact Report.
The Philippine economy ended 2025 on a softer note, with gross domestic product growing 3.0 percent year on year in the fourth quarter, bringing full-year growth to 4.4 percent, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority. The figures point to an economy that is still expanding—but unevenly, with clear winners and laggards.
The Philippine economy grew slightly less than initially reported in the third quarter of 2025, after official data revisions shaved a tenth of a percentage point off headline growth.
The value of Philippine agricultural output rose to P1.77 trillion in 2025, up 2.6 percent from a year earlier—a solid showing that would have been stronger were it not for weather-related disruptions in the final quarter, data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed.
China Banking Corp., one of the banks of the Sy Group, is raising shareholder returns, underscoring resilience amid global uncertainty. Its board has approved P7.5 billion in total cash dividends, equivalent to 27 percent of its P28 billion net income for 2025.
If you think city life is stressful, try being a wide-eyed, bug-eating primate barely the size of a fist, living next to roads, construction, and the occasional chainsaw. Meet the Philippine tarsier, now confirmed to be quietly surviving in the middle of urban Tacloban.
“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every house divided against itself will not stand.” In the Lopez corporate universe, the verse now reads less like scripture and more like a live governance case file—complete with injunctions, contested boardrooms, and competing versions of who nearly switched off the lights.
The Philippines recorded improvements in financial inclusion in 2025, according to a report by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), with more young people and women gaining access to financial accounts.