Camiguin, town top governance index

THE PROVINCE of Camiguin and the municipality of Alfonso Castañeda in Nueva Vizcaya grabbed the top spots in a national survey of good governance in 2008, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) said in a statement released yesterday.

The Good Governance Index (GGI), which ranked 79 provinces and 1,473 municipalities, was based on scores for good governance which included sustainable management of resources and responsiveness to poverty reduction; improvement of internal and external security, law enforcement and the administration of justice; efficiency of health, education and power supply services; and people’s empowerment and participation.

“The GGI aims to come up with objective, comprehensive and comparable measures of good governance based on outcome indicators in order to guide policy makers and stakeholders in the country in assessing local and national performance, thereby promoting more evidence-based policy making and decision making towards good governance,” Secretary-General Romulo A. Virola said in the statement.

The performance of local governments was measured by three major subindices, namely, economic governance, political governance and administrative governance, all of which NSCB considered as main areas of governance.

Rounding up the top 10 provinces were Siquijor, Kalinga, Benguet, Batanes, Laguna, Mt. Province, Ifugao, Apayao and Compostela Valley.

Meanwhile, joining Alfonso Castañeda in the top spots were Pantabangan, Nueva Ecija; Carasi, Ilocos Norte; Kalayaan, Palawan; Adams, Ilocos Norte; Ivana, Batanes; Dumalneg, Ilocos Norte; Dinapigue, Isabela; Carmona, Cavite and Maconacon, Isabela.

In 2005, when the survey was previously conducted, Batanes was ranked first among provinces while Alfonso Castañeda was already ranked the best among municipalities.

Data were still unavailable, however, on which provinces and municipalities were at the bottom.

NSCB added that it was unable to look into how the provinces and municipalities worked for the elimination of graft and corruption, improvement of transparency and accountability, improvement of information and communications technology and continuous building of local government unit (LGU) capacities due to unavailable and incomplete data in some provinces.

“We cannot say that it is a very accurate reflection of the state of governance in the different provinces because of data limitations,” Mr. Virola told BusinessWorld in a phone interview.

He added that the survey was dependent on the availability of data among LGUs and how updated information were.

“Our hope is that by pursuing this initiative, a few years from now, we would be able to come up with a GGI that is more timely and conceptually appropriate in a sense that the GGI is reflective of the comprehensive state of governance in an LGU,” Mr. Virola said.

He added that NSCB should come up with a similar list before the 2013 elections but it still depends on the availability of provincial data for the indicators. — Jo Javan A. Cerda, Businessworld