Philippine Peso - PHP

The national of the Republic of Philippines, the Philippine Peso (PHP) was at the beginning a by-product of the Spanish dollar (that is to say, as in Mexico, of the “real”), the archipelago of Philippines was a Spanish colony from 1565 to 1898.

Despite the independence attempts, Philippines were colonized by the United States in the XX century; the real independence of the Philippines was obtained in 1946 after the liberation of Philippines by the American armed forces which put an end to the Japanese occupation (1942-1945).

During the American colonisation, the Philippine peso had been defined by fixed parity with the US dollar (1 peso = 0,5 dollar); the current Philippine peso was created a the same time as the Central Bank of Philippines (1949).

A not very strict monetary policy (which consisted in issuing a lot of banknotes to reduce the external debt of Philippines that kept increasing from 1950 because of a hyperinflation and a weak economic growth) provoked several devaluations of the Philippine peso.

So, we estimated that one peso of the period 1903-1949 (then convertible into gold and linked to the dollar by a fixed parity) would have cost 1200 pesos in 2008.

The recent fluctuations of the peso against the US dollar seem to be widely “pacified”.

So between 2005 and 2008, the Philippine peso appreciated against the US dollar, the USD/PHP cross went from USD/PHP = 56 in January 2005 to USD/PHP = 41 in January 2008 ; then the dollar reasonably re-appreciated during the year 2008, which was a year characterized by a world financial and stock-exchange instability (USD/PHP = 47 in December 2008). This parity maintained on a large period (USD/PHP = 47,030 by the end of November 2009).