PASAY CITY – Bauko in Mountain Province and Lamut in Ifugao stole the limelight in the recently concluded Cities and Municipalities Competitiveness (CMCI) summit by landing in strategic positions in government efficiency and resiliency, respectively.
Bauko was able to maintain the second spot in the criteria of government efficiency while Lamut grabbed the top spot in the criteria of resiliency giving the Cordillera honor and pride in terms of producing competitive local governments.
Last year, Bauko was able to garner second place in government efficiency, 543rd place in economic dynamism, 60th place in infrastructure development and 519th place in resiliency.
Aside from sustaining its hold of second place in governance efficiency, Bauko improved its ranking by 200 notches from 543rd to 343rd in terms of economic dynamism and from 519th to 481st in terms of resiliency but dropped by over 100 notches from 60th to 175th in terms of infrastructure development.
Mayor Abraham B. Akilit attributed the achievement of the local government to the individual and collective efforts of concerned stakeholders who want to witness the growth and development of the town for the benefit of the present and future generations of residents.
However, he disclosed that he will review the parameters of the CMCI criteria and look into how the local government will be able to improve its performance in the aspects of economic dynamism, infrastructure and resiliency so that Bauko’s ranking will continue to improve in the coming years.
“We will look into our performance and try to implement the needed strategies for us to be able to address whatever were our deficiencies in some of the criteria for us to improve our rankings in the coming years,” Mayor Akilit stressed
The CMCI is an annual ranking of Philippine cities and municipalities developed by the National Competitiveness Council through the Regional Competitiveness Committees with the assistance of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Under the CMCI framework, cities and municipalities are ranked on their competitiveness based on an overall competitiveness score which is the sum of scores on four main pillars which pool data from several sub-indicators. The 4 main pillars include economic dynamism, government efficiency, infrastructure and resiliency.
The local chief executive underscored much has yet to be done in improving the economic activities and infrastructure of the town but there is a need for the sourcing out of the funds from concerned government agencies to be able to attract the influx of investors once the overall infrastructure of the locality will be significantly improved to suit the demand of interested businesses wanting to operate in the various investment areas.
Akilit urged concerned stakeholders to maximize the gains of the local government in terms of competitiveness to continue working together for the upliftment of the status of the municipality and chart its development thrusts pursuant to the present state of the environment without compromising the same to allow it to move on to greater heights in the future.
By HENT
