The Asian Development Bank (ADB) approved $1.5 billion on September 24 to help finance the Philippine government’s Unified Package for Livelihoods, Industry, Food, and Transport (UPLIFT) as the Middle East conflict strains the country’s economy.
ADB said the financing will help the Philippines protect families from rising prices and keep essential public services running. The money will go toward securing fuel supplies, maintaining affordable power and health services, keeping food and medicines affordable, and supporting people whose incomes are threatened by the conflict. It will also help bring affected overseas Filipino workers home and assist them on their return.
The government’s response aims to reach millions of poor and vulnerable Filipinos and their families. Its measures include fare discounts, subsidies for provincial and small electric cooperatives, and fuel and fertilizer subsidies. Medical relief packages and cash assistance will go to poor and vulnerable households, public transport operators and drivers, small-scale farmers, and fisherfolk.
ADB is supporting UPLIFT through its Assistance for Greater Resilience and Alleviation of Poverty program. The support comes through ADB’s Countercyclical Support Facility, its region-wide crisis financing mechanism.
“Every week this crisis continues to ask more of people who have little left to give,” said ADB President Masato Kanda. “They have a right to expect that the institutions serving them will meet their struggle with equal resolve. With this financing, we are backing the Philippines’ determination to keep its people secure and its future within its own hands.”
According to ADB, the Philippines imports nearly all its fuel and depends heavily on imported fertilizers, which leaves it exposed to sharp increases in global prices. Oil accounts for about a third of the country’s primary energy supply and comes largely from the Middle East. A significant share of fertilizer imports also comes directly or indirectly from the region. Higher prices raise transport costs and the cost of growing rice and other crops.
The Middle East remains a major destination for overseas Filipino workers. About 1.1 million workers were deployed to the region in 2025, and their remittances made up about 18% of the Philippines’ $35.6 billion in total remittances that year. ADB said labor deployment to the region has declined substantially this year amid the conflict.
The approval builds on earlier regional support. ADB, which describes itself as the main bank of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, has previously provided about $500 million to help Southeast Asian economies weather the effects of the Middle East conflict.
ADB was founded in 1966 and is owned by 69 members, 50 of them from the Asia-Pacific region. The announcement did not say when the funds will be released.
