MANILA: The Philippines has been reclassified by the World Bank as an upper-middle income country — a target it has been trying to achieve since the 1980s — after posting a record gross national income per capita of $4,850.
The upper-middle income, or UMIC, rank is the World Bank’s category for economies with GNI per capita ranging from $4,636 to $14,375.
The Philippines was previously in the global lender’s lower-middle income bracket.
The World Bank’s latest country income classification on Wednesday showed that the Philippines’ GNI increased in 2025 by 8.5 percent from $4,470 in 2024, when it narrowly missed the UMIC threshold by $26.
“The Philippines achieved its reclassification through broad-based expansion. GDP grew at an average of 5.8 percent per year over five years, reflecting gains across all major industries, not a single sector boom, but an economy-wide shift,” the World Bank said in a statement on Wednesday.
