NAVOTAS City has improved its competitive standing among the country’s 33 highly urbanized cities (HUCs) last year, but the same survey done by the National Competitiveness Council (NCC) revealed the city is the weakest and poorest performer in Metro Manila during the period.
NCC information posted on its web site showed Navotas City leaped to 31 ranking in last year’s HUCs out of 33 contenders out of 34 entries a year before and 31 in 2015, also from 34 HUCs.
This means Navotas City, under the leadership of Mayor John Reynald M. Tiangco, has a 2-point change from 2016 to 2017, but 2 points down from 2015 to 2016.
Tiangco, now 45 years old, has been the city’s mayor since 2010. He replaced then-Mayor Tobias M. Tiangco, his older brother who ran and won as the city’s representative to the House of Representatives in the same year.
NCC noted Navotas got 34.6849 points last year, while it received 24.070588 points in 2016 and 30.4964 points in 2015.
Last year’s performance compared to 2016 was a significant development. However, its 2015 performance showed its rank was 31 after it obtained a score of 30.4964 points.
The number asserted there was a huge decline in Navotas City’s competitiveness capacity in 2016 when compared to 2015. It recovered in 2017 as it gained significant points.
The NCC’s ranking is a summary of the points it gained in the four pillars of competitiveness, such as in economic dynamism, government efficiency, infrastructure and resiliency.
Under economic dynamism, NCC evaluates the city’s size of the local economy, growth on its local economy, local economic structure, safety compliant business, increase in employment, cost of living, cost of doing business, financial deepening, productivity and presence of business and professional organizations.
What are being measured under the government efficiency category are the compliance to the national directives, presence of promotion investment unit, business registration efficiency, capacity to generate local resource, capacity of health services, capacity of school services, recognition of performance, compliance to Business Permits and Licensing System (BPLS) standards, peace and order, and social protection.
In terms of infrastructure, the NCC looked at the city’s road network, distance to ports, availability of basic utilities, transportation vehicles, education, health, LGU investment, accommodation capacity, information-technology capacity and financial-technology capacity.
Resiliency is all about the city’s land-use plan, disaster risk-reduction plan, annual disaster drill, early warning system, budget for DRRMP, local risk assessments, emergency infrastructure, utilities, employed population and sanitary system.
The NCC does its surveys on the country’s cities, including the highly urbanized ones, and municipalities through the competitiveness index that it developed through the Regional Competitiveness Committees (RCCs) with the help from the United States Agency for International Development.
Each RCC has a representative each from the public sector, private sector and academe.
The Philippines has a total of 17 RCCs.
The improved performance of Navotas City last year appeared to be weakest and poorest among the 16 cities in Metro Manila.
The municipality of Pateros, the only municipality in Metro Manila, belongs to a different category.
The NCC said Navotas City’s economic dynamism performance last year was ranked 32 out 33 entries as it got 3.5297 points.
In 2016 its rank was 33 with a score of 6.717498169 points. This means Navotas City has a good performance compared to a year before, but poor when compared to the 2015 performance. In 2015 it was at 28 rank with 7.0965 points.
There was a dive of 4-point difference in last year’s performance compared to 2015 and 6-point down if measured also from 2015 ranking, NCC revealed.
Looking at its 2017 performance, the size of Navotas’s economy received 0.0418 points, thus, ranking 24.
This was a high jump from the two previous years as the city was both on the 33rd spot.
