Cebu City, 3 towns named most improved LGUs

CEBU, Philippines —  Cebu City is back on the right track after it leapfrogged from 24th last year to 13th in the overall rankings of competitiveness among highly-urbanized cities in the country that paved the way to being adjudged as the most improved HUC in the 2023 Philippine Creative Cities and Municipalities Competitiveness Congress.

No less than Mayor Michael Rama has been pushing department heads and its employees and even the private sector and the rest of the Cebuanos to aim to be on top when he returned to City Hall as a duly elected mayor of the City of Cebu last year.

Cebu City emerged as the most improved HUC followed by Butuan City at second and Iligan City at third.

Rama’s persistence is now showing good results after going up 11-notch higher from its overall standings last year with a score of 41.73 total that made them the most improved.

Rankings of cities and municipalities are based on the sum of their scores on four pillars: including economic dynamism, government efficiency, infrastructure, resiliency, and innovation while provincial rankings are based on population and income weighted average of the overall scores of cities and municipalities under a province.

Based on the four pillars, Cebu City ranked ninth for its economic dynamism. Among the nine indicators of these pillars, the city’s active establishments in the locality and cost of living where Cebu both ranked third.

In matters of innovation, the city ranked 12th with two of the  said pillars, Cebu City on top of it– its ICT use and E-BPLS software and online payment facilities, second in its ICT plan and third on intellectual property registration and availability of basic internet services.

On infrastructure, Cebu City is at 17th while it also has to work on its resiliency after ranking 30th, although Cebu City ranked the highest in its disaster risk reduction plan and local risk assessment and fifth in the sanitary system.

Mandaue City trailed Cebu City in the overall rankings among HUCs while Lapu-Lapu City is at 29th of 33 entries.

Quezon City led by Mayor Joy Belmonte remains on top followed by Pasay City and Manila City at third.

Tabuelan town in northern Cebu ranked third as the most competitive infrastructure among the 3rd to 4th class municipalities.

Alcoy town in southern Cebu landed third as the most improved LGU among 5th to 6th class municipalities.

San Remigio, also in northern Cebu, also emerged third most improved among the 3rd to 4th class municipalities in the country.

Cebu Province is at 52nd overall among 82 provinces listed. The top three among the provinces are Rizal, Davao del Norte and Laguna.

GREEN AWARD

Meanwhile, the City of Mandaue received the Haligi Award from the Philippine Green Building Council during the Building Green Conference 2023 at Modala Beach Resort, Panglao in Bohol the other day.

Mayor Jonas Cortes personally received the award for its efforts in putting into place the advocacies of the Movement for Building Green that is in line with the policies under the Building for Ecologically-Responsible Design Excellence.

During the awarding ceremony where Cortes was also invited as a speaker, he emphasized that youngsters should also be involved in the protection of the environment.

"In Mandaue City, we start them young. We believe that engaging the youth and instilling in their mindset the consciousness and urgency to apply green building practices is something that they can do and advocate for as they grow to become professionals and contributing members of the society," Cortes said.