MAYOR Arturo Radaza credits his detractors for the City’s performance in a competitiveness survey that gave Lapu-Lapu City the best overall score among metro cities in the Visayas.
“My only hope is for them to rise above their crab mentality,” he said, adding he also wants them to help achieve the City’s goal of becoming globally competitive.
As for Cebu City, Administrator Francisco Fernandez said they will use the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) study to determine which areas should be improved.
The Philippine Cities Competitiveness Ranking Project 2007 listed Lapu-Lapu City as the best city in terms of overall score among the metro cities in the Visayas, namely Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu.
The AIM study listed six competitiveness drivers and divided the cities into three categories: metro cities, mid-sized cities and small cities. The study involved 90 cities, with 20 vying in the metro category.
It examined the cost of doing business, dynamism of the local economy, human resource and training, infrastructure, the local government’s responsiveness to business needs and the quality of life.
Among the three Visayas metro cities, Cebu ranked highest in terms of competitiveness in the cost of doing business, dynamism of the local economy, and human resource and training.
But Lapu-Lapu bested Cebu and Mandaue in terms of infrastructure and quality of life.
Lapu-Lapu was cited as best in infrastructure because of the Mactan Export Processing Zone and the Mactan-Cebu International Airport and its City Development Strategy World Bank project.
Among the three cities, Cebu City scored the least in terms of quality of life.
Fernandez said he has yet to read the AIM study and peruse its methodology and criteria to have a better grasp of how it came up with its findings.
But, he said, the study will greatly help Cebu City improve to best serve its people.
City Planning and Development Coordinator Paul Villarete, in a separate interview, said the City will take the study “with a grain of salt.”
“It is not for us to deny or accept something that comes out in the news. Investors look at a particular situation, and try to take care of themselves. So just look at how and where investors go,” he said.
“It is up to the people of Cebu who read the news to make the judgment, to ponder on it. Just let it (the study) be,” he said.
In Lapu-Lapu’s case, the survey result came amid complaints of poor service and allegations of corruption.
Efrain Pelaez Jr., Mactan Island anti-graft watch group head, has rated Radaza’s administration “very poor in public service and the most corrupt.” (Pelaez and City Hall officials have since traded charges before the anti-graft office and the courts.)
Pelaez cited unattended bad roads, lack of political will to enforce environmental laws, uncollected garbage and rampant squatting as some of the issues that City Hall has not addressed.
But City Councilor Eduardo Cuizon, who is also alternate chairman of the Tripartite Industrial Peace Council, said the two recognitions the City earned from independent studies contradict what critics have been saying about City Hall.
“You cannot please everybody, but the two studies dispel allegations that our City is business-unfriendly and tainted with a system of corruption,” he told Sun.Star Cebu.
Last May, Lapu-Lapu City was recognized by the International Finance Corp. and the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) Policy Center as the second most business-friendly city in the country.
Assistant City Attorney Michael Dignos said the two studies are more believable than the unfounded accusations by some critics.
“We are not paying for the study. We do not even know there is such a study so it’s difficult to rebuff it,” he said. (AIV/RHM)
