Philippine Standard Time (Filipino: Pamantayang Oras ng Pilipinas, abbreviated PST), also known as Philippine Time (PHT) and informally Juan Time, is the official name for the time in the Philippines. The country only uses one time zone (UTC+08:00), and for a short period, it also used daylight saving time which is known as Philippine Saving Time (abbreviated PHST) as an emergency measure.
Contents
Geographic details
Geographically, the Philippines lies within 116°40′ 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 Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, most parts of China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, central Indonesia, and Western Australia.
History
Philippine Standard Time was instituted through Batas Pambansa Blg. 8 (that defined the metric system), approved on 2 December 1978 and implemented on 1 January 1983. The Philippines is one of the few countries to officially and almost exclusively use the 12-hour clock in non-military situations.
From 1521 to 1844, the Philippines had the same date as Mexico, because it had been a Spanish colony supplied and controlled via Mexico until Mexico's independence in the 1820s. Monday, 30 December 1844 was immediately followed by Wednesday, 1 January 1845, which added 1 day or 24 hours to the local time. This meant that International Date Line moved from going west of the Philippines to go on the east side of the country. 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.
Use of daylight saving time
As of 2016, the Philippines does not observe daylight saving time, although it was enforced for short periods during the presidency of Manuel L. Quezon in 1936-1937, Ramon Magsaysay in 1954, Ferdinand Marcos in 1978, and Corazon Aquino in 1990.
Juan Time
Television and radio stations in the Philippines display the time, but varied from a few seconds to minutes. In September 2011, the Department of Science and Technology proposed to synchronise time nationwide in an effort to discourage tardiness. PAGASA installed a rubidium atomic clock, a GPS receiver, a time interval counter, distribution amplifier and a computer to help calculate the time difference with every satellite within its antenna’s field of view.
On May 15, 2013, President Benigno Aquino III signed Republic Act No. 10535, better known as the "The Philippine Standard Time (PST) Act of 2013" as a last step to finally implement the Juan Time. Effective June 1, 2013, all government offices and media networks will be required to use Philippine Standard Time as a basis to set their timepieces. In addition, the first week of January will be regularly observed as the National Time Consciousness Week.
IANA time zone database
The IANA time zone database contains one zone for the Philippines in the file zone.tab, named Asia/Manila.