Competitiveness councils are expected to be set up in eight regions by midyear as part of an ongoing bid to improve the country’s attractiveness.

A National Competitiveness Council (NCC) official yesterday said a road show scheduled this month was aimed at pushing the process with local government units (LGUs), business groups and universities, building on the successful creation of a council in Bicol earlier this year.

“A province or a region... are the building blocks of national competitiveness, so we feel we need to have more local councils. You cannot build competitiveness on just two or three economic hubs alone,” Guillermo M. Luz, NCC private sector cochairman, told BusinessWorld.

The regions participating in the roadshow are the Western Visayas, Central Visayas, Eastern Visayas, Northern Mindanao, Davao, SOCCSKSARGEN, CALABARZON and Central Luzon.

An NCC visit to the Bicol region in March resulted in the creation of the first regional competitiveness council; the addition of new bodies will help the national council in terms of additional data to be used to fine-tune strategies.

“Right now, we’re creating a template of indicators which these local competitiveness councils must collect on an annual basis,” Mr. Luz said.

Regions targeted by the roadshow will also be tapped to participate in a national enterprise survey on corruption to be conducted by the Social Weather Station on behalf of NCC and the Integrity Initiative.

The results of the study will be announced at the Second Integrity Initiative Summit on Sept. 14, he noted.

The targeted regions will also participate in client satisfaction surveys regarding government services.

In February, the NCC released its first client satisfaction survey on the effectiveness of the Business Process Licensing System.

original source: www.bworldonline.com