MANILA – Pornography may be illegal in the Philippines, but that hasn’t stopped the country’s underground adult studios from raking in an estimated U.S. $1 billion annually to become the world’s eighth largest production market for adult products.

China, South Korea, Japan, the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and Italy all outrank the Philippines in adult content production. The Philippines is tied with Canada and Taiwan, according to statistics published at Top Ten Reviews. The statistics are almost three years old, but the Philippine government fears the country may have climbed in the charts and has begun debating more effective law enforcement efforts.

According to the Filipino government, online porn purveyors — most from foreign countries — have found havens in cities like Angeles, Olongapo, Manila, Pasay, Makati and Quezon City, where they hire both male and female prostitutes to film scenes. Prostitution also is illegal in the country.

One educator said he thinks the situation is not as much indicative of a perversion of Filipino morals as it is growing realization porn can be profitable in a struggling economy.

“Hardcore sex movies are just subcontracted to us, for example, by Korean producers,” University of the Philippines Film Institute professor Dr. Rolando B. Telentino told AmericanChronicle.com. “Most of our sex-themed movies are either soft-porn (from bold films to current gay films), including those which are uploaded to e-sites and the video scandals. Uploading and viewing depend on the people’s personal pleasure.”

According to the chief of the country’s Optical Media Board, foreign porn studios offer Filipinos good money to perform for them. Eduardo Manzano told AmericanChronicle.com that in 2008, one American producer paid up to $1,000 per performer per scene.

The more pressing problem, according to Manzano, is counterfeit adult content. Each month, his agency confiscates thousands of pirated DVDs. During the first nine months of 2008, OMB removed from circulation more than 4.8 million DVDs with a street value of 1.4 billion Philippine pesos (about U.S. $29,400,000 at the time).