The Philippines was ranked as the "middle power" country in February's Lowy Institute Asia Power Index.

The index shows that the Philippines ranked 16 of 26 for comprehensive power, with an overall score 12.8 out of 100.

In a symposium in the Ateneo de Manila, Susanna Patton, director, Asia Program Project Lead, the Lowy Institute Asia Power Index noted that "the Philippines' best score in the index is the defense network as the result of your alliance with the United States."

"We include in the index what we called the alliance force multiplier which is really the benefit to each country of their alliance relationships, so the US doesn't get a big alliance force multiplier because it's the biggest contributor to those alliances," she said.

According to the index, the Philippines’ strongest measure is defence networks, where it placed ninth, reflecting the extent of its bilateral military cooperation with treaty ally, the United States.

Patton said the weakest measure is resilience, where the country ranks 20th, in part as a result of internal conflict legacies.

"One interesting result in this edition is that the Philippines military capability score went up quite a bit. It rose by two ranks 17th which is not particularly high. It was due to an improvement in the air warfare capabilities," she said.

"The Philippine diplomatic influence also rose in this edition of the index but not actually as much as for other Southeast Asian countries. The Philippines was not quite as active as some others when it comes to diplomacy at the prime minister level and above," she added.

Based on the index, the United States which got first place followed by China. Japan finished third place and is also classified as a middle power. Robina Asido/DMS