Danica office in Philippines

Philippines fact sheet

General

The Philippines is an archipelago composed of more than 7,100 islands with a total coastline length of about 18,000 kilometres. The total land to water ratio is 1:7, with a land area of approximately 300,000 square kilometres and a total water area of 2.2 million square kilometres. It was under Spanish rule for 333 years and under USA tutelage for a further 48 years.

Capital

Metro Manila is the National Capital Region located on Luzon, the largest island.

Population

114 million

Currency

Philippine Peso. 1 Peso = 0.018 USD

Language

English and Tagalog

Seafaring history and traditions

According to the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW), since 1987 the Philippines has been the world's main supplier of sea-based workers, making the country the manning capital of the world. Around 229,000 Filipino workers are on board merchant shipping vessels around the world at any given time. Overall, Filipino sea-based workers comprise more than 25 percent of the 1.5 million mariners worldwide, making them the single biggest seafarer nationality bloc in the shipping industry.

It's no surprise that Filipino seafarers have made a mark in the maritime industry. The nation itself is an archipelago, with local seafarers voyaging long before Spanish galleons travelled between Manila and Acapulco. However, the surge in the number of Filipino sea-based workers occurred during the oil crises in the 1970s when the world could no longer afford Western crews. The need for seafarers drew Filipinos from the underprivileged provinces of the Philippines to enrol in the local maritime schools.

Today the Philippines continues to be the primary source of sea-based workers in the global shipping and transport market, providing manpower for tankers and sea vessels from other countries around the world, most notably Denmark, Japan, the United States, Panama, Liberia, Cyprus, Bahamas, Jamaica, Greece, Malta, Singapore, Norway and Germany.

Most major universities of the Philippines offer maritime courses, with the leading public school being the government-funded Philippine Merchant Marine Academy. It also has its own training centre for further development of seafarers. There are between 20,000 and 35,000 maritime students completing their three-year course every year but only about 5,000 manage to find jobs on board ships to continue their seafaring career. As these numbers reveal there is a huge supply of cadets available every year to be developed to officers and crew for any company willing to invest in cadetship training, developing and building their pool of seafarers.

Number of officers

81,090 (merchant vessels)

Number of ratings

171,303

Vessel types (on which the seafarers have experience)

All types of vessels including cruise and offshore

Key maritime cities / Seafarer hubs

Metro Manila, Luzon, Cebu, Iloilo, Mindanao

Key maritime education and training centres

Metro Manila, Luzon, Cebu, Iloilo, Mindanao