Cagayan de Oro City (August 20)– In the 6th Regional Competitiveness Summit organized by Department of Trade and Industry, Cagayan de Oro was chosen to be among the “Top 5 Most Competitive City” in the highly urbanized cities categories.
Placed as No. 1 country’s most competitive city is Quezon City, followed by Manila City and Pasay City as the second and third placers, respectively. Davao City came in fourth, Cagayan de Oro City on fifth, outranking Makati City, the country’s top financial center, on sixth place. To complete the list, Pasig City on 7th, Bacolod City on 8th, Cebu City on 9th, and Muntinlupa on 10th.
The overall ranking selection was based on the four pillars: 1) Resiliency; 2) Infrastructure; 3) Government Efficiency; and 4) Economic Dynamism. CDO was five ranks higher as compared to its overall ranking last year.
“I dedicate the most resilient awards for highly urbanized city, to the memories of those who perished from [Typhoon] Sendong, and those who have suffered immeasurable pain and loss,” City Mayor Oscar Moreno said.
In 2017, Cagayan de Oro City placed as No. 22 in the resiliency category, but made a huge step in this year’s edition to become the “most resilient city’ after ranking No. 1. It was able to maintain 5th place for the infrastructure category and jumped two ranks in economic dynamism, from 15th to 13th place this year. Cagayan de Oro city also improved its ranking in government efficiency category, placing 7th in 2018 as compared to 16th place last year.
Through this award received by the city, major foreign investors are seeing CDO as a feasible and strategic place that will help the economic growth of the city.
“As a whole, the objective of the competitiveness is really to see where we stand as a city, how you can attend to your investors, how they look at also our city if they put their investments here.” Eileen E. San Juan, Local Economic & Investment Promotion Officer, said. “We see this as a very important award, because there are a lot of investors who are already coming here, because of the fact that Cagayan de Oro, is known, as one of the most competitive city” San Juan added. Hensell Hebaya/ NewsLine
