Monday, October 09, 2006
Baguio competitiveness slips: survey
CITY Councilor Edilberto Tenefrancia said Sunday that the result of this year's "State of the City's Competitiveness Report" is "not just a picture of the local government but of the whole (city)."
The report by the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) and the St. Louis University-College of Business Administration (SLU-CBA) placed Baguio in 13th out of 15 mid-sized cities from various parts of the country. Baguio placed third in 2002 and seventh in 2004.
Leah Umali, AIM policy center program manager, said: "The study is based on the general perceptions of stakeholders from Baguio's small and medium scale enterprises (SME)."
"Our goal is to motivate local governments to change mentality from being mere service providers to economic managers; provide feedback mechanism to local governments," she added.
"We are here to volunteer to equip local government units (LGUs) with tools to analyze best practices in economic management from other LGUs, which they can adopt into workable strategies in local planning efforts," she also said.
The survey included the cities of Angeles, Bacolod, Baguio, Batangas, Butuan, Cabanatuan, Cagayan de Oro, Calamba, General Santos, Iligan, Iloilo , Lipa, San Fernando in Pampanga, Tarlac, and Zamboanga. Among the top five mid-sized cities for this year are Bacolod, Batangas, Iligan, Iloilo, and San Fernando in Pampanga.
Umali said the joint study was based on Baguio's overall performance "in terms of linkages and accessibility, infrastructure development, cost effectiveness, human resource and training, responsiveness of the local government, dynamism of local economy, and quality of life."
Dr. Renaldo Bautista, dean of SLU-CBA, meanwhile, said: " Baguio performed well in 'quality of life' and 'quality of human resources.'"
But he bemoaned the fact that the city slipped to bottom third because the city "had a high cost of doing business, bad vehicular traffic, inefficient provision of basic utilities, insufficient banking institutions, and a worsening environment, and poor responsiveness of the LGU in providing avenues for local development."
City Planning and Development Coordinator Arturo Orig said "the report, largely based on perception of only the SMEs, is unempirical. It cannot be made the basis for development plans that rely mainly on scientific data."
But Bautista said "AIM and SLU-CBA utilized some data from the City Planning and Development Office (CPDO)." However, the last census of the city was conducted in 2000, which Bautista admitted, "may affect the data yielded in the course of the study."
Tenefrancia, on the other hand, said "it is not important if we are number one, what is important is we are capable of competing and that the good news is we fared well in terms of 'quality of life'." (IL)
(October 9, 2006 issue)
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