A Region’s Local Economic Development and Competitiveness Index

Abstract

The nationwide survey on local economic development and competitiveness index shows the local government unit’s competence in three major dimensions namely; economic dynamism, government efficiency, and infrastructure. It focuses on 30 pre-identified indicators of economic development and competitiveness from the National Competitiveness Council (NCC) reflecting the local government unit’s (LGUs) financial growth and stability, and examines the potential reinforcing factors as well as the hindering factors on business licensing competitiveness. The survey was conducted in Mindanao to gather secondary sources of data from various local government offices, private sectors and regional agencies. The findings revealed that the quality of performance in terms of economic dynamism, efficiency and infrastructure is highly relevant but not excellent. The progressive LGUs have shown responsiveness on efficiency in terms of government policy on service, client demands, consistent with the national policies to improve support on the government economic programs, however, it failed to have an excellent rating. Thus, there are still more lacking areas in promoting tourism support, business and industry promotion, and transparency on entrepreneurship. The scope of economic development and competitiveness provided opportunities on the plurality of factors to describe increase accountability among key local authorities on systematic recording and archiving of financial data.