Philippine Standard Time (PST or PhST; ), also known as Philippine Time (PHT), is the official name for the time zone used in the Philippines. The country only uses a single time zone, at an offset of UTC+08:00, but has used daylight saving time for brief periods in the 20th century until July 28, 1990.

Geographic details

Geographically, the Philippines lies and 126°34′ east of the Prime Meridian, and is physically located within the UTC+08:00 time zone. Philippine Standard Time is maintained by the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA). The Philippines shares the same time zone with China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Western Australia, Brunei, Irkutsk (Russia), Central Indonesia, and most of Mongolia.

History

For 323 years, 9 months, and 14 days, which lasted from Saturday, March 16, 1521 (Julian Calendar), until Monday, December 30, 1844 (Gregorian Calendar), the Philippines followed the date of the western hemisphere and had the same date as Mexico. This was because it was a Spanish colony supplied and controlled via Mexico until Mexico's independence on September 27, 1821. On August 16, 1844, the Spanish Governor-General Narciso Claveria decreed that Tuesday, December 31, 1844, should be removed from the Philippine calendar. Monday, December 30, 1844, was immediately followed by Wednesday, January 1, 1845, which added 1 day or 24 hours to the local time. This change meant that the International Date Line moved from going west of the Philippines to go on the east side of the country, which had to follow the eastern hemisphere to align itself with the rest of Asia. At the time, local mean time was used to set clocks, meaning that every place used its own local time based on its longitude because the time was measured by locally observing the Sun. Philippine Standard Time was instituted through Batas Pambansa Blg. 8 (that defined the metric system), approved on December 2, 1978, and implemented on January 1, 1983. The Philippines is one of the few countries to officially and almost exclusively use the 12-hour clock in non-military situations. In September 2011, the Department of Science and Technology proposed to synchronize time nationwide, which was an effort to discourage tardiness and non-standard time displayed on television and radio stations. PAGASA installed a rubidium atomic clock, a GPS receiver, a time interval counter, a distribution amplifier, and a computer to help calculate the time difference with every satellite within its antenna's field of view. In order to promote synchronicity with official time, on May 15, 2013, President Benigno Aquino III signed Republic Act No. 10535 setting the Philippine Standard Time, requiring all government offices and media networks to synchronize their timepieces with PAGASA's rubidium atomic clock.

Time in the Philippines

Use of daylight saving time

Since 1990, the Philippines has not observed daylight saving time, although it was in use for short periods during the presidency of Manuel L. Quezon in 1936–1937, Ramon Magsaysay in 1954, Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1978, and Corazon Aquino in 1990.

IANA time zone database

The IANA time zone database contains one zone for the Philippines in the file zone.tab, named Asia/Manila

Date and time format

Date

Time