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LUCENA CITY, Quezon, Philippines — The conversion of Carmona into a component city of Cavite province proved a welcome development for Fifth District Rep. Roy Loyola and his wife, Mayor Dahlia Loyola.
On Feb. 23, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed Republic Act No. 119381 mandating the town’s cityhood, which the Presidential Communications Office announced the following day.
“It has been 12 long years since we started our journey to cityhood,” the lawmaker said in a Facebook post on Friday in which he also thanked the senators and representatives who have backed Carmona’s cityhood bid — from the 15th Congress until the 19th Congress.
The mayor was also elated about the announcement.
The new law will take effect 15 days after its publication in the Official Gazette or a newspaper of general publication.
The law requires Carmona to hold a plebiscite within 60 days of approval.
Carmona, classified as a first-class municipality, has 14 barangays with a population of 106,256, as of the 2020 census.
Based on the annual financial report of the Commission on Audit (COA) in 2021, Carmona was tagged as the richest municipality in the country with total assets of P6.212 billion.
Carmona will be the first municipality to be converted into a city under Republic Act No. 11683, which amended the Local Government Code of 1991 and made it easier for towns to apply for cityhood.
Under RA 11683, which amended Section 450 of RA 7160 or the Local Government Code of 1991, a municipality or cluster of barangays with a locally-generated general annual income of at least P400 million for the last two consecutive years and has a population of not less than 100,000 inhabitants may be converted into a component city.
Once ratified in a plebiscite, Carmona will become the eighth city in Cavite.
The seven other cities in the province are Bacoor, Dasmariñas, General Trias, Imus, Tagaytay, Trece Martires, and Cavite.