THE City Government of Cagayan de Oro, through its Trade and Investment Promotions Center, just boosted the city’s competitiveness and investments attractiveness through the Cagayan de Oro Competitiveness Network.
Composed of the different City Government offices such as the City Social Welfare and Development, City Tourism Office, City Planning Office, City Health Office, City Agriculture Office, and agencies like the Department of Education, among others, Eileen San Juan, city trade and investment promotions officer, said the establishment of the network will likely have an impact on the city's ranking in the Cities and Municipalities Competitiveness Index.
Cities and Municipalities Competitiveness Index or CMCI is an annual ranking of Philippine cities and municipalities developed by the National Competitiveness Council through the regional Competitiveness Committees with the assistance of the United States Agency for International Development.
It is a ranking of local competitiveness in how a city or municipality knows its resources and how it uses these to improve its standard of living.
According to its website, cmcindex.org.ph, the CMCI has four competitiveness pillars or indicators, namely: (1) Economic Dynamism, which is usually associated with activities that create stable expansion of business and industries and higher employment; (2) Government Efficiency, refers to the quality and reliability of government services and government support for effective and sustainable productive expansion; (3) 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; and (4) Resiliency, 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.
Cagayan de Oro City has been on the top 10 ranking of highly urbanized cities from 2013 to 2017, with the city ranking first in 2013 and 10th last year.
San Juan said Cagayan de Oro City being in the top 10 helps in the investments promotions of the city.
"A lot of companies, a lot of investors will also look, would also want to see how we stand against other cities so it really helps in seeing to it that we maintain yung ating (our) ranking or standing in the competitiveness," San Juan said.
The Cagayan de Oro Trade and Investments Promotions Center, according to San Juan, is tasked to look after the data from the survey to be submitted in the National Competitiveness Council and to help in "evaluating and assessing how the city could move forward having all of the data and information" and how to improve the city's performance.
"That's why we created this stakeholders network so that there is a proper coordination. Also once we get the data and compare it with our performance from the previous years. It also signals the other departments on how to improve and do better," San Juan said.
The result for the rankings of Cities and Municipalities Competitiveness Index, San Juan said, is usually announced in August.