THE The Municipality of La Trinidad is evidently the most competitive town in the Cordillera Administrative Region as adjudged in the recently held seventh Regional Competitiveness Summit and Cities and Municipalities Competitiveness Index (CMCI) awarding ceremonies at PICC, Pasay City. It ranked 12th overall among many hundreds of first to second class Municipalities in the country, and a top contender in three of the four pillars of the assessment criteria. The CMCI is an annual activity that ranks cities and municipalities of the country based on overall competitiveness score. The score was derived from the sum of points of all the four pillars of the award which are: Economic Dynamism, Government Efficiency, Infrastructure and Resiliency.
Among the four pillars, Economic Dynamism is associated with activities that create stable expansion of business and industries and higher employment. Naturally, local governments are perceived to provide an avenue for economic growth for its people. La Trinidad placed seventh in Economic Dynamism for this year among hundreds of municipalities. In Government Efficiency, which refers to the quality and reliability of government services and government support for effective and sustainable productive expansion, La Trinidad placed 14th overall in its municipal category.
Another valuable pillar which is 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. 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.
La Trinidad as a “Kalasag” awardee placed 19th in Resiliency, which is defined as the capacity of a locality to facilitate businesses and industries to create jobs, raise productivity, and increase the incomes of citizens over time despite of the shocks and stresses it encounters. This 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. Generally, the values and completeness of the actual data determines the actual scores. The higher the score of a city or municipality, the more competitive it is.
More than a source for pride of place, the competitiveness index serves as an assessment tool for local governments to improve its services and institute or implement programs that will make a better town for its people. After all, our purpose in the civil service side is to function as an efficient and honest government for the people.
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The Adivay 2019 events will feature local entrepreneurs and the Benguet Municipalities’ One-Town-One-Product at the Benguet Capitol lobby on Nov. 11 to Nov. 15, 2019. The committee, led by Provincial Local Investments and Promotions Officer, Camilo Alumit, is inviting fellow entrepreneurs to visit the said exhibit area which is intended to serve as an avenue for local product exhibit and promotion, and business networking. Said activity is part of the provinces’ aggressive campaign to put our local products in the national and international stage—a program to improve our competitiveness, not only as a town, but as a province.