Mandaue hailed ‘most improved’ urban city

CEBU, Philippines —  Mandaue City was named as the Most Improved Highly Urbanized City in the country.

The city topped the rankings of Highly Urbanized Cities under the Cities and Municipalities Competitive Index (CMCI) during the recently concluded 9th Regional Competitiveness Summit (RC) Summit by the DTI-Competitiveness Bureau.

Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes said the recognition can be attributed to the unprecedented teamwork and collective effort of the city’s various departments and Sangguniang Panlungsod “who have tirelessly worked to ensure that their business community, investors and Mandauehanons will always be on top of their priority.”

“The entire Mandaue City government deserves this award. Mandaue second to none!,” said the mayor in his Facebook post.

According to DTI website, CMCI is an annual ranking of Philippine cities and municipalities developed by the National Competitiveness Council through the Regional Competitiveness Committees (RCCs) with the assistance of the United States Agency for International Development.

It said that existing competitiveness indicator systems were used as guidelines in forming the framework behind the Index. Four convergent pillars were found among the most common key indicator areas that includes economic dynamism, government efficiency, infrastructure and resiliency.

It added that economic dynamism is usually associated with activities that create stable expansion of business and industries and higher employment. This is the concrete representation of productivity as it matches the output of the local economy with local resources.

Government efficiency refers to the quality and reliability of government services and government support for effective and sustainable productive expansion.

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 represents the idea of making productivity sustainable over time.

While resiliency is 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. — KQD (FREEMAN)