Oro ranks 5th in DTI’s list of competitive cities

CAGAYAN de Oro yesterday emerged as the 5th most competitive highly urbanized city in the country as far as the Duterte administration is concerned.

The city’s ranking was announced during the Department of Trade and Industry’s 6th Regional Competitiveness Summit at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay.

Overall, Cagayan de Oro was adjudged as the 5th most competitive city in terms of ease of doing business, a ranking that showed a significant improvement. Last year, Cagayan de Oro ranked 10th in the DTI’s highly urbanized cities category.

Cagayan de Oro was ranked next to Davao City that clinched the 4th place. The two are the only cities outside Metro Manila to be in DTI’s Top 5 list.

The others are Quezon City which topped the list, Manila and Pasay cities.

Cagayan de Oro also ranked No. 1 in the resiliency category for highly urbanized cities, 5th in the infrastructure category, 7th in the government efficiency category, and 13th for economic dynamism, according to city hall spokesperson Maricel Rivera.

Another winner was the town of Salay, Misamis Oriental which ranked third place in the government efficiency category for 3rd to  6th class municipalities.

Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez spoke about “building local competitiveness and ease of doing business” during the summit which, he said, was organized to recognize the most competitive cities and municipalities in the country this year.

The summit highlighted the results of the cities and municipalities competitiveness index aimed at ranking over 1,500 local governments across the country.

Lopez urged local chief executives to reinvent their ways of delivering government service and urged local governments to level up the competitiveness of their localities to attract more investments and to create more jobs for the Filipino people.

He noted that there were over 1.8 million approved business registrations nationwide in 2017. (ESG)