IMPLEMENTATION of the country’s medium-term development plan will now include the monitoring of priority competitiveness indicators, officials said, as part of the effort to raise the Philippines’ global ranking.
A total of 111 indicators — taken from the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2010 competitiveness report — have been mapped to the 2011-2016 Philippine Development Plan (PDP) and matched to relevant government agencies.
“The competitiveness indicators will be used in our agency’s results matrix, which will become the basis for monitoring and assessing the country’s performance in terms of outputs and outcomes,” said Rolando G. Tungpalan, National Economic and Development Authority deputy director-general, in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
Guillermo M. Luz, co-chairman of the National Competitiveness Council (NCC), said: “The competitiveness indicators are important, because it’s possible for the country to meet its [PDP] target — for example, in terms of the length and number of roads built — but the global ranking for that indicator doesn’t change.”
Of the 111 indicators, 25 have been color coded red, meaning the Philippines is in the bottom 20% in the 2010 list of 139 economies.
These include “public trust of politicians” — the country was ranked 135th — that will be handled by the Office of the Ombudsman and a multisectoral anticorruption council, and “quality of overall infrastructure” (113th), which has been made the responsibility of the Public Works and Transportation departments.
Only one of the code red indicators, “favoritism in decisions of government officials” — has yet to be matched with an office.
Another 35 indicators were color-coded purple, meaning the Philippines is ranked in the bottom 40-21%, while 20 are orange — a placing in the bottom 50-41%. Only 29 are classified as black, indicating a 1st-68th place ranking.
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