One of the Philippines' statistical authorities, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), declares four geographical levels:

• Region
• Provinces or independent city
• Dependent city or municipality
• Barangay

As a rule, data are reported at only the two highest levels.  The sole exception is the municipality of Pateros (IPHL_PAT), located within the National Capital Region and treated like a province.

There are 18 regions, 17 of them active and one discontinued (see note 1).  There are 115 active provinces and independent cities.

Note 1: In 2002, Region IV was split into Region IV-A CALABARZON and Region IV-B MIMAROPA (IPHL_CB and IPHL_MM). Their names are initialisms, hence capitalized.

Note 2: The provinces of Davao del Norte and Compostela Valley (IPHL_COV and IPHL_DDN) were once a single province called Davao Oriental (no geo code).

Independent cities, also known as highly-urbanized cities, have gained their independence from the containing province and may not vote for provincial officials.  Statistically they are equivalent to provinces, and are counted separately even if their territory is contained within the province, i.e., the province is annular. 

Additionally, component independent cities act like independent cities before that classification was declared, and are mainly used for historical data prior to 1992.  There are 32 such areas, included in 15 provincial totals; they do not exist as separate geo codes in Data Buffet.  This geo type applies only to the births/deaths dataset [see related article] and the areas are listed in its table 2.

References:

• Official:
  • NSCB: Summary
  • NSCB: List of Regions
• Unofficial
  • Statoids: Provinces of the Philippines
  • Chan-Robles: The Local Government Code of the Philippines - 1992

Table 1: Geographic types for the Philippines and what their Data Buffet geo codes look like.

Table 2: Philippines geographic hierarchy and geo codes.  This shows the statistical structure.  Indentation shows the physical containment of independent cities within provinces.