The Philippines (a Southeast Asian archipelago nation and current chair of ASEAN, the ten-member regional bloc) recorded GDP growth of just 2.8% in the first quarter of 2026, its weakest non-pandemic performance since the global financial crisis and a sharp step down from 5.4% growth recorded a year earlier. The slowdown has been driven largely by a collapse in public investment, which analysts link to a 2025 flood-control corruption scandal that left government agencies reluctant to approve spending, while a surge in oil prices tied to the US–Iran war pushed inflation to 7.2% in April — the largest single-month jump in the country's 21st-century history. The poor result is particularly stark given that fellow ASEAN members Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore all posted significantly stronger growth in the same period, suggesting domestic governance failures, rather than global headwinds alone, are behind the Philippines' underperformance at the very moment it holds the region's rotating chairmanship.