What makes a city competitive?

General Santos still rates as the Philippines’ most liveable city. This, despite bombings that disrupt residents’ lives and sabotage businesses.

Economic statistics and surveys of businessmen rank the Mindanao city as tops in terms of, among seven measures, low cost of doing business, adequacy of basic services, responsiveness of local officials, and facility to move goods.

GenSan is classified as a mid-size city, yet fares highest even when compared to 32 small and metropolitan cities. Statistics and surveys also place Davao as the most competitive of metro-cities, and San Fernando (Pampanga) among the small ones. The Philippine Cities Competitive Rankings 2001 come from data in local offices of the Department of Trade and Industry, and polls by the Asian Institute of Management. Schools like De La Salle-Lipa, University of San Carlos, University of San Agustin, UP-Mindanao, Xavier University, Angeles University Foundation and St. Louis University provided qualitative analyses that translated into ratings on a scale of ten.

Terrorist bombings in GenSan killed 14 civilians, mostly children in a mall, on the Sunday before DTI Sec. Mar Roxas announced the rankings. The high grade that businessmen gave, Roxas said, probably reflects their perception of how city hall responds to such lawless attacks. Officials did bring normalcy back to GenSan within two days with road checkpoints. Police immediately arrested suspects. Commerce began to flow again in what many have come to regard as Mindanao’s dream city. This is the second time that GenSan was ranked most competitive of Philippine cities. A 1999 AIM study of ten cities bore the same result. Will GenSan retain such rank next time around, when DTI and AIM expand the study to 60 cities?

The study lifted the same type of statistics and questions from the yearly World Competitiveness Survey of 49 countries. In that international poll, the Philippines ranked 32nd in 1997 and 31st in 1998, then slid down to 37th in 1999 and 40th in 2000. The latest results show RP still at 40th in 2001, pulled down by data and polls that rated it dead last in productivity and infrastructures. It could have been worse, had not RP posted No. 1 in employment growth compared to only 45th in 2000. (Yet critics complain that the Arroyo administration has not done enough in this area.)

DTI and AIM adopted seven measures of city competitiveness:

(1) Cost of doing business, as in, how expensive is it to operate in the city compared to others? Factors include the cost of industrial power, office space and telephone services.

(2) Dynamism of the local economy, in terms of average household income, inflation rate, percentage of Top 200 corporations, market size, vibrancy of tourism, and rising business revenues.

(3) Infrastructures, that is, number of banks, reliability of electricity and water services, adequacy of landline or cellular phone and Internet facilities, road density and maintenance, traffic management, commuting time during rush hours.

(4) Linkages and accessibility, as in, how easy is it to transport goods and services to the city? Are there domestic or international ports nearby?

(5) Quality of human resources, as in, how prepared are residents to build and take advantage of opportunities in the locale? This includes the number of colleges, availability of skilled labor, adequate info-technology training.

(6) Responsiveness of local officials, in terms of amount of internal revenue allotments, securing business permits in one to two days, feeling of business security, transparency in government dealings, reasonable taxes and land-use regulations, existence of a development masterplan, and regular consultations with citizens.

(7) Quality of life, in terms of percentage of squatters, incidence of theft and homicide, cleanliness of roads and waterways, and adequacy of parks and open spaces.

Cities that well-travelled Filipinos and foreign executives have always marvelled about got their due. Next to GenSan among the mid-sized cities were Bacolod and Baguio. Next to Davao among the metro-cities were Cebu and Marikina. (In 2000, Davao was ranked sixth among Asia’s most liveable cities in terms of clean air and peace and order.) Next to San Fernando (Pampanga) among the small cities were Tagaytay and San Fernando (La Union).

Roxas noted that a big factor in the responses of businessmen–the cities biggest taxpayers who thus had the most expectations about their money’s worth – had a lot to do with local elective and appointive officials. Leadership–in foreseeing a city’s needs and solving its problems–is the name of the game in competitiveness. The culling of data and polling of businessmen were done from August to September 2001. A downside was that the work came right after a local election that showed the assumption of new officials in some of the 33 cities surveyed who probably had not had enough time to undo the mess of their predecessors. Respondents in one Visayas city complained about neglect, corruption and ineptitude in the city hall, which was indeed an election issue that brought the old mayor and councilors down.

Roxas was quick to acknowledge the kink in the survey and pointed as an example one of Metro Manila’s big cities. After an old administration held sway for nine long years, a new team was just beginning to cure the city’s acute squatting and garbage ills when the study was conducted. Thus, the tendency of respondents to rate the city in terms of the past mayor. (Roxas’s own home city, named after his grandfather and a former President, was not even included in the survey.)

Still, Roxas said the kink is temporary. Once the competitiveness rankings are held each year, local officials will be able to measure their accomplishments and gauge the sentiments of their constituents. By then, both officials and residents will also be able to judge their cities in the context of history.

A case in point is Iloilo, which ranked 6th out of ten cities in the 1999 competitiveness study, and 8th out of ten mid-sized cities in the 33-city study of 2001. Only 25 years back, Iloilo was called the Queen City of the South. Another quarter-century earlier, it was ranked among the most industrial city in Asia, with 60,000 spinning wheels, a road network to air and seaports and all directions of Panay, and a well-educated population. But a foreign businessman decided to build the world’s biggest sugar mill in the city that made it so dependent on the product. The decline in the ’80s of the sugar industry also led to Iloilo’s decay. But it’s not the end for it.

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