2018 index awards
The city has gone one rank lower from its previous ranking as the third most competitive highly-urbanized city in the country, but still made it to the top 5.
Davao City bagged the Fourth Most Competitive City in the Highly-Urbanized category during the 2018 Cities and Municipalities Competi-tiveness Index Awards at the 6th Regional Compe-titiveness Summit held at the Philippine International Convention Center on August 16, 2018.
A tourist enjoys taking a selfie with the Obu Manubo tribe at IP Village during Kadayawan Festivities. ARJOY M. CENIZA
“The skid from 3rd to 4th can be explained by the different concepts in the business permitting processes,” Davao City Planning and Development Office Chief Ivan Cortez said.
He said last year “it was okay to count actual time spent per office then accumulate spent time per office divide by eight hours per day. The imposed system this year is that every office or every step in the process, regardless if it will only take a few minutes, they counted it as equivalent to one day.”
Cortez said that with the new system, the whole process of getting a permit is counted as a five-day process if the applicant has to go to different offices even if the permit is released in just one day.
“Davao City has consistently ranked among the top 5 most competitive cities in the Philippines in the past years,” he said.
The city ranked fifth most competitive highly-urbanized city in 2015 and 2016 but got the third place in 2017. The award is given annually by the Department of Trade and Industry-National Competitiveness Council on the basis of each city’s ranking in economic dynamism, government efficiency and infra-structure.
In 2016, Davao City ranked 8th for economic dynamism category, 4th for government efficiency category and 6th for infrastructure.
A new category, the resiliency award, was added last year and Davao City ranked first in this category. Last year, it was also the only city in Mindanao that made it to the top five, following Quezon City and Manila City.
“The award is the testament of all the efforts made by all of the departments of the City Government to bring development to Davao City. With this award, we can see that the government is unceasingly giving its best to continue to improve its services,” Cortez said.
Davao City placed third in Economic Dyna-mism, one step higher from the previous year’s ranking according to the Davao City Investment Promotion Center. Among the factors considered for this category are the size of economy, sources of material, structure of economy, safety compliance of businesses, cost of living, financial deepening involving the number of financial institutions within the city and number of people employed.
The city also got third prize in the Infrastructure category, which include roads, water and power utilities, telecommunication, number of transport vehi-cles, education and health facilities and financial technology capacity.
From its previous first place ranking, the city this year ranked second in Resilience, which is measured based on land-use planning, disaster risk management plan, early warning systems and emergency infrastructures.
The cities and municipalities competitiveness index measures a local government unit’s competitiveness and presents an opportunity for local governments to better understand their performance against global standards.
Mayor Sara Duterte earlier attributed the city’s awards and achievements to the vibrant partnership between the city government and the private sector. Lovely A. Carillo
