A Regional Competitiveness Committee (RCC) will be set up in eight different provinces and key cities in the country including Cebu to gather economic data about their communities, which will then be compared to other cities in the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (Asean).
The RCC network—which includes Cagayan de Oro, Tacloban City, General Santos City, Davao City, Batangas City, Legaspi City, Iloilo City and Cebu— is expected to be in place by June, said Guillermo Luz, co-chairman of the National Competitiveness Council (NCC) during an interview on Monday.
The council is a public-private sector body created to develop strategy for the long-term competitiveness of the Philippines through policy reforms, project implementation and monitoring performance among others.
Luz said the creation of the RCC would be a way to make the country more competitive as each region, city or province would become aware of their strengths and weaknesses.
He said with the information showed by each region, city or province could do something to improve their individual competitiveness and the whole country’s competitiveness as well.
Luz said the Council had three RCCs at present—one in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao—which weren’t enough and so the plan to set up the five more RCCs.
“We see this as a good start because as an organization, NCC is mandated to help improve the country’s competitiveness and we think that having presence in one province or region in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao won’t be enough to do that,” said Luz.
Luz met with the businessmen in Cebu representing the organizations of the Metro Cebu Development Coordinating Board.
“I met with them and they are open to create the committee. Mr. Joseph (Gordon Alan) was tasked as the coordinator for the creation of the committee and they will have another meeting to discuss more about this,” said Luz.
Luz said the creation of the committee would benefit Cebu because it would become a venue for the stakeholders to work together and gather the economic data according to the indices of NCC.
The indices include basic economic information like population, wage rate, infrastructure, quality of life. which includes education, safety and health, cost of doing business, and the human resources available here.
“All these information once gathered will then be consolidated by NCC and benchmarked among other key cities in the Asean region,” said Luz.
Luz proposed that the stakeholders would engage in a tripartite type of partnership in the undertaking involving the private sector, government and the academe.
“I hope here in Cebu that the different academic institutions will volunteer like the University of the Philippines especially in gathering data. We’re looking at third year to fourth year students to do the data collection for their studies,” said Luz.
The Philippine Retailers Association Cebu Chapter (PRA-Cebu) would support the initiative, said PRA-Cebu president Melanie Ng in a text message to Cebu Daily News.
“Everyone moving together and working towards making Cebu more competitive should be a top priority for every Cebuano. PRA definitely supports the creation of this worthy endeavor involving all sectors and chambers,” said Ng, who attended the meeting with Luz.
“We are ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success for the economic growth of Cebu,” she said.