BAGUIO CITY – The Regional Competitiveness Council (RCC) in the Cordillera remains optimistic that more local governments in the region will continue to climb the ladder of success in the competitiveness rankings in the future that will sustain the delivery of quality service to the people.
Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan, RCC-CAR vice chairperson, said the performance of LGUs in the recent competitiveness rankings should serve as a continuing challenge for the local officials to improve on the aspects of competitiveness they were not able to achieve so that there will be continuity in the improvement of the performance of the local governments.
He said that local officials should use the results of the competitiveness ranking as the basis of planning how to improve the status of the local governments in the 4 pillars of the competitiveness towards improved economic dynamism, government efficiency, infrastructure and resilience.
Myrna Pablo, RCC-CAR chairperson and regional director of the Cordillera office of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI-CAR), said the scores of the local governments in terms of economy dynamism are determined by the values of the actual data as well as the completeness of the submitted data, thus, the higher the score of the city or municipality, the more competitive it is.
She added economic dynamism is usually associated with activities that create a stable expansion of businesses and industries and higher employment which is a concrete representation of productivity as it matches the output of the local economy with local resources or it is the combination of the entrepreneurial spirit and the financial institution that will channel dynamism.
Pablo explained government efficiency refers to the quality and reliability of government services and government support for effective and sustainable productive expansion and the said factor looks at government as an institution that is generally not corrupt; able to protect and enforce contracts; apply moderate and reasonable taxation and is able to regulate proactively.
According to her, infrastructure refers to the physical building blocks that connect, expand and sustain a locality and its surroundings to enable the provision of goods and services and it involves basic inputs of production such as energy, water, interconnection of production such as transportation, roads and communications; sustenance of production such as waste, disaster preparedness, environmental sustainability and human capital formation infrastructure and it makes the idea of making productivity sustainable over time.
Pablo asserted resiliency is the capacity of a locality to facilitate businesses and industries to create jobs, raise productivity and increase the income of citizens over time despite the shocks and stresses it encounters and it implies that the role of local governments is critical in ensuring a competitive environment to make businesses sustain their profits, create jobs, and increase the productivity of its people and order for localities to be able to do the same, it must be resilient in its infrastructure, governance, social and environmental systems.
By Dexter A. See
