The City of Naga bagged the top post for component cities category nationwide in the Cities and Municipalities Competitive Index (CMCI) for year 2020. The news was released by the central office of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) on Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2021 via virtual conference with different local government units (LGUs) in the country.
It was on Thursday, July 21, 2022, that the regional office of DTI conferred to Naga City (Bicol Region) in in-person ceremony the plaques which was formally received by Vice Mayor Cecilia V. de Asis, who represented Mayor Nelson Legacion who was on official travel.
Adjudged as (First Place) Overall Most Competitive Component City, Naga was also ranked No. 1 in Infrastructure provision, second in Economic Dynamism and third in both Government Efficiency and Resiliency.
In an interview, Mayor Nelson Legacion said the impressive score obtained by the city will serve as stimulant for his administration to keep on finding ways to better serve the Nagueños. “We will not rest on these laurels,” he said.
“I would like to emphasize also that the conferment of such title [overall most competitive component city] to our city is a confirmation that we are on the right path and heading towards the right direction of governance,” he said.
He said the competitiveness ranking or the evaluation of the LGU’s performance covered the year 2020, the period when the city was at the height of battling the Covid-19. Aside from the pandemic, the city was also experiencing difficulties then brought about by typhoons Quinta, Rolly (the most powerful storm recorded worldwide in 2020), and Ulysses.
“But the resilient character of the city was even more strengthened and galvanized by our partner entities that aided us in bringing back the normalcy in our city in a very short span of time,” Legacion said.
Other Bicol cities were far down the list with Iriga City at 30th, Sorsogon City at 41st, Ligao City at 53rd, Masbate City at 61st and Tabaco City at 98th place out of 113 cities in the country. Legazpi City was third in Infrastructure, fifth in Resiliency, 13th in Government Efficiency and 15th in Economic Dynamism.
Most of the Bicol’s city local government units (LGUs) had poor ratings in Economic Dynamism, one of the four pillars of the competitiveness index, which also include Government Efficiency, Infrastructure, and Resiliency.
Provinces are not included in the actual ranking but their standing is based on “population and income weighted average of the overall scores of cities and municipalities under a province” while rankings of cities and municipalities “are based on the sum of their scores on 4 Pillars: Economic Dynamism, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) stated in its web site.
Naga and Legazpi City’s top rankings failed to pull up their respective provinces as Camarines Sur ranked 42nd and Albay placed 22nd among the 81 provinces in the country.
Camarines Norte was at 65th place, while Catanduanes was at 73rd place, Masbate at 74th and Sorsogon province was listed at 75th place among 81 provinces and the last among the six Bicol provinces.
The CMCI is an annual ranking of Philippine cities and municipalities developed by the National Competitiveness Commission (NCC) in partnership with the Department of Trade and Industry to determine the competitiveness of local government units.
Primarily, the rankings provide “diagnostic tool for local government units in assessing their competitiveness and identify the areas for improvement and collaboration as well as provide insight for policy making, development planning and investment promotion”, NCC explained.
It can also serve as guide to the private sector to determine the capacity of a local government unit and the community as well as other factors which are deemed critical in deciding where to locate their businesses, the agency added.
DTI sources said the government agency will release CMCI results for year 2021 in this month of August 2022.
(Bicol Mail with reports from Bobby Labalan.)
