Regions of the Philippines

In the Philippines, regions (Tagalog: "rehiyon") are administrative divisions that serve primarily to organize the provinces ("lalawigan") of the country for administrative convenience. Most government offices are established by region instead of individual provincial offices, usually (but not always) in the city that is the regional center.
The regions themselves do not possess a separate local government, with the exception of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which has an elected regional assembly and governor.
List of regions.
The Philippines has 17 administrative regions. Fourteen of these regions are designated with numbers corresponding to their geographic location in order from north to south. The National Capital Region, Cordillera Administrative Region, and Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao do not have numerical designations.
These regions are geographically combined into the three island groups of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Following is a list of the regions in their island groupings.
The regions CALABARZON, MIMAROPA, and SOCCSKSARGEN are written with upper case characters because they are acronyms that stand for their component provinces or cities. CALABARZON stands for CAvite, LAguna, BAtangas, Rizal and QueZON; MIMAROPA stands for Occidental and Oriental MIndoro, MArinduque, ROmblon and PAlawan; and SOCCSKSARGEN stands for SOuth Cotabato, Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, SARangani and GENeral Santos.