BAGUIO CITY – The city maintained a good overall rank in the Cities and Municipalities Local Economic Development Competitiveness Survey by the National Competitiveness Council (NCC) placing 15th among 122 cities.
The city improved its rank in the pillar of government efficiency from 13th to 7th but slipped in economic dynamism from 18th last year to 21st this year and in infrastructure from 21st to 38th.
Among the 34 highly urbanized cities surveyed, the city maintained its 14th place landing 17th in economic dynamism, 7th in government efficiency and 27th in infrastructure.
Although its overall standing is two notches lower than the previous year’s 13th place finish, it is still considered a good showing considering that the city is the only small city that made it to the top 20.
Mayor Mauricio Domogan said the survey results showed that the city still has to exert more effort to improve in the three pillars used as indicators particularly on infrastructure and aconomic dynamism.
The mayor said the delays in the approval of the budget and the zoning ordinance contributed to the city’s performance.
City planning and development officer Evelyn Cayat who supervised the collection and analysis of data for 2015 said the drop in infrastructure may have been caused by the lack of airport facilities in the city.
The lack of an approved updated Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) may have also been a factor as this is one of the criteria in the survey.
The survey is done annually to assess the performance of some 500 municipalities and cities in the country and is based on the following criteria: economic dynamism, government efficiency and infrastructure.
Economic dynamism is measured according to the size of the local economy, capacity to generate employment, cost of living, cost of doing business, financial deepening, productivity and presence of business and professional organizations.
Government efficiency indicators are capacity of health services, schools, security, business registration efficiency, compliance to business permits and licensing system standards, presence of investment promotion unit, compliance with national directives, ratio of local government unit collected tax to total LGU revenues, most competitive award and social protection.
Infrastructure is assessed based on existing road network, distance of city hall to major ports, number of accredited accommodations, availability of basic utilities, LGU investment in infrastructure, connection to information and communication technology, number of public transportation vehicles, health infrastructure, education infrastructure and number of automated teller machines (ATMs).
Other indicators are the cost of freight, number of public transport terminals, frequency of trips per day, number of retail companies and environmental protection. **Aileen P. Refuerzo and Daniel Carino- PIO Intern
