Regions of the Philippines

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The region (Filpino:rehiyon, ISO 3166-2:PH) is an administrative division of the Philippines that primarily serve to organize the 81 provinces (lalawigan) for administrative convenience. Most government offices establish regional offices instead of individual provincial offices, usually (but not necessarily always) in the city designated as the regional center.

The regions themselves do not possess a separate local government, with the exception of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which has an elected regional assembly and governor. The Cordillera Administrative Region was originally intended to be autonomous (Cordillera Autonomous Region), but the failure of two plebiscites for its establishment reduced it to a regular administrative region.

1 History
2 List of regions
3 Defunct regions
4 Notes
5 References

History

Regions first came to existence in on September 24, 1972 when the provinces of the Philippines were organized into 11 regions by Presidential Decree No. 1 as part of the Integrated Reorganization Plan of President Ferdinand Marcos.

Since that time, other regions have been created and some provinces have been transferred from one region to another.

July 7, 1975: Region XII created and minor reorganization of some Mindanao regions.
August 21, 1975: Region IX divided into Sub-Region IX-A' and Sub-Region IX-B. Minor reorganization of some Mindanao regions.
November 7, 1975: National Capital Region created.
August 1, 1989: Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao created.
October 23, 1989: Cordillera Administrative Region created.
October 12, 1990: Executive Order issued to reorganize the Mindanao regions but the reorganization never happened (possibly due to lack of government funds).
February 23, 1995: Region XIII (Caraga) created and minor reorganization of some Mindanao regions.
1997: Minor reorganization of some Mindanao regions.
September 19, 2001: Most Mindanao regions reorganized and some renamed.
May 17, 2002: Region IV-A (CALABARZON) and Region IV-B (MIMAROPA) created from the former Region IV (Southern Tagalog) region.
May 23, 2005: Palawan transferred from MIMAROPA to Western Visayas; MIMAROPA renamed to MIMARO.
August 19, 2005: The E.O. 429 of May 23, 2005 transferring Palawan from MIMAROPA to Western Visayas was later held in abeyance by Administrative Order #129.

List of regions

The Philippines consists of 17 regions. The regions are geographically combined into the three island groups of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Following is a list of the regions in their island groupings. To get overviews of the regions, see the respective articles on the island groups. The regions CALABARZON, MIMARO/MIMAROPA, and SOCCSKSARGEN are capitalized because they are acronyms that stand for their component provinces or cities.[1]

Luzon

Region
(short name) Regional center Provinces National Capital Region
(NCR; Metro Manila) ManilaNo provinces Cordillera Administrative Region
(CAR) Baguio City

Ilocos Region
(Region I) San Fernando City

Cagayan Valley
(Region II) Tuguegarao City

Central Luzon
(Region III) San Fernando City

CALABARZON
(Region IV-A) Calamba City

MIMAROPA
(Region IV-B) Calapan City

Bicol Region
(Region V) Legazpi City

Visayas

Map Region
(short name) Regional center Provinces Western Visayas
(Region VI) Iloilo City

Central Visayas
(Region VII) Cebu City

Eastern Visayas
(Region VIII) Tacloban City

Mindanao

Map Region
(short name) Regional center Provinces Zamboanga Peninsula
(Region IX) Pagadian City

Northern Mindanao
(Region X) Cagayan de Oro

Davao Region
(Region XI) Davao City

SOCCSKSARGEN
(Region XII) Koronadal City

Caraga
(Region XIII) Butuan

Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao
(ARMM) Cotabato City

Defunct regions

The following are regions that do not exist, explanations about their current status follow each region's name.

Southern Tagalog (divided into CALABARZON or Region IV-a and MIMAROPA or Region IV-B)
Western Mindanao (now Zamboanga Peninsula, still designated as Region IX)
Central Mindanao (now SOCCSKSARGEN, still designated as Region XII)
Southern Mindanao (now Davao, still designated as Region XI)