The Phillipines should take the offer and the Senate should ratify the agreement.
The Philippine (apparently the adjectival form isn't Filipino, after all) population is growing very fast, and the Philippine economy is growing very little. They've been overtaken by Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand in Southeast Asia (and China, if you consider China to be in both Northeast and Southeast Asia) in terms of per capita income.
And China had roughly 1.3 billion people to figuratively drag up (though the country's large size has also made the nation a magnet for investment).