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Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Hebrona: 22 good things about Gensan
By Bronx Hebrona
Mind Your Business
(Continued)
THIS week, we continue Gwyn Clarisa's piece on the good and promising things about Gensan:
8. In the 70's and early 80's, General Santos was known as a City of Dust. In the late 80's and early 90's, it was called a Boomtown. Now others refer to it as a "Bust Town" but the truth is at present we are still enjoying the benefits of its being a boom town.
9. The city has been transformed from a city of dust into one of the country's cities with well-paved roads. Add to that is the fact that our forefathers have the foresight to plan the city's future well ahead of their time. Our road network is the widest in the country and it always amuses first-timers in the city to see how wide our roads are. Also, lots are mostly regularly shaped thus we have well shaped roads unlike those in cities like Zamboanga, Cagayan de Oro and Davao City. One negative comment that the city got was the fact that we don't have Paved sidewalks. I always laugh at this kind of observation. How can we pave our sidewalks when at present our sidewalks are much wider than both sides of our paved roads? And our paved roads are already what? Three lanes on both sides?
10. With wide roads come light traffic. Yes, we still have that luxury in our city. We can travel in one place to another without wasting much of our time on the road.
11. Less hassles on parking areas. Yes, we don't have parking space problems. While Zamboanga, Davao and CDO already have their share of parking spaces problems, we still do not have that in Gensan.
12. While our fiscal managers may not be the best there is in their fields, they are at least doing quite well for us.
Consider this, our city joins Davao, Zamboanga and CDO among the top ten income-generating cities in the country for 2004. We however trail the three as they are in the top five. Davao has a lot of businessmen investing in their area, Zamboanga boasts of those from the Sardines Making Industry while CDO have the support of the steel and power generating industry.
However, our major difference with them is the fact that much of the Income that we generate really goes back to the people as much as we intend them to be. Although the major portion of the income generated by the local government goes to salaries and wages of our government workers, substantial portions also goes for the developmental projects of the government.
Compared to the other three cities mentioned, we have lower borrowings Than them thus we are paying lower interests than the others.
Come to think of it, we have more money than the other cities even if we are earning less than them. That's because we don't borrow much. The three other cities need to borrow to fund their projects as well as fund the national government's projects intended for their city.
As it is, our National Government doesn't have the money, although they still plan projects to "help" our cities. But they still have to source out the funding for these, either thru internally generated funds (i.e. BIR & Customs collections, GOCC contributions) or thru borrowings. For cities to realize these projects immediately, the local government can fund the project and have it reimbursed by the National Government.
That's what most cities do. They fund the projects to make sure that the projects get done and not cancelled and funds intended for it are not transferred to another project. The three cities mentioned earlier, Borrow from financial institutions to be able to fund the projects. We are lucky we seldom resort to that. (Kahit papano, marunong pa ring mag-isip kahit kakaunti ang ating mga local government officials compared to officials of other cities.). We get the project by funding it ourselves and when we get reimbursed, these are again used for local projects.
In short, we get more value on the use of the income our city generates, compared to the three other cities but we still have to work on the burgeoning local bureaucracy and the quality of service that they provide. The latter problems however are not exclusive to us but are also present to the three other local governments mentioned so actually, we are really better off than them. (To be continued)
(You may write Bronx Hebrona at P.O. Box 46430, Gen. Santos City 9500, or email him at binex@asia.com. He hosts Radyo Negosyo, a weekly radio program that promotes entrepreneurship and financial literacy, every Sunday at 9-10 am over DXBB AM (RGMA Superadyo) at 1107 KHz. He is President-Convenor of the Socsargen Financial Intelligence Network, Inc., which promotes financial literacy and entrepreneurship in the region)
(August 29, 2005 issue)
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