Philippine time for the modern Filipinos

Time is an important consideration for the traveling businessman; and when he needs to visit the Philippines then the businessman needs to check what Philippine time is. The Philippine standard time is the official name for the time that is followed in the country and this is also the label that is used to distinguish the country's time from the other time zones around the world.

What is known as the time zone is a specific region of the earth that will have the uniform standard time and this will be known in that area as their local time. The many time zones in the world will be divided into the standard and the daylight saving time. The so-called daylight saving time zone or called the summer time zone will have an offset of +1 for the daylight saving time. The standard time zones that people follow now are defined by dividing the Earth's spheroid into 24 wedge-shaped sections and these are bordered by the meridians. Neighboring zones will usually be apart by an hour. In general the definitions used for the time zones will be written in the form of UTC plus or minus n where the n here will refer to the offset hours. The Philippines is located somewhere east of the prime meridian and if following the time zone format, the time here will follow the UTC + 8 time zone.

Based on the official listing of time zones, the time in the Philippines is similar to that of All China region that follows the UTC+8 time zone. In the Philippines, the modern Philippine Standard Time was instituted through the enactment of the Batas Pambansa Blg 8. This is the law that defined the metric system and this was approved during the time of Ferdinand Marcos, the former Philippine President. In paper, this was signed into a law on December 2, 1978 but the official adoption of the modern time for the country was started on January 1, 1983.

The official time in the Philippines is maintained by one governmental institution. This make sense since a number of time keepers will usually give different times, though these times may be separated by mere seconds. With a single government agency that handles the time, then this makes for convenience in doing business and nationals and foreigners can look only at that single governmental institution for the official time in the country. The official time keeper of the country is the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration or the PAGASA. Aside from the fact that the country shares the time zone with China, it should be noted as well that the country also shares the time zone with many Asian countries and even Western Australia.

The lists of countries that share the time zone of the country include;

. Malaysia
. Brunei
. Central Indonesia
. Hong Kong
. Macau
. Singapore

The country flirted with the concept of daylight saving time as well. In the daylight saving time, the clocks are advanced so that the afternoons will have more daylight and the mornings will have less. In most cases the clocks in the daylight saving time are adjusted to move an hour forward near the start of the spring and will be adjusted as well backward in the autumn. This kind of practice that was adopted by many countries around the world was controversial in a sense that this affects many businesses in the affected areas. By adding day light to the afternoons, then the retailing stores and other activities that thrive in sunlight after working hours will win but this move will affect those people whose profession is tied to the sun. The good news here is that a significant number of traffic fatalities are reduced.

The Philippines flirted with this time concept briefly in the 1990s as a way to address the frequent interruptions during that time. But as the country's power has stabilized and the many transmission systems have recovered, the daylight saving time was removed. The Philippine time has gained negative press in the past due to some actuations of the people of being late. This has led to the emergence of the 'Filipino time' tag; a pejorative term that the country is trying to shake off its system.