The Philippines is the second most-populous country in Asean and this has been one of its major strengths. The country benefits from a large, well-educated labour pool. The literacy rate is over 90% and the Philippines has repeatedly been ranked number one in the availability of knowledge based workers worldwide, based on surveys done by US-based Meta Group. It also benefits from the large remittances from the four or five million Filipinos who work abroad.
The country has a large domestic market and the Philippine economy is less-dependent on exports than its Asean peers. This allowed it to weather the 2008-09 global recession better than most regional economies. The World Bank forecasts that its GDP will expand by 6.5% in 2015 from an estimate of 6.0% in 2014.