Thursday, April 24, 2008 [ sunstar.com.ph ]
AFTER being named one of the Top 10 Asian Cities of the Future, Cebu City made it to the top 20 list of “Best Places to Live” in the country.
But business magazine MoneySense ranked Cebu City only as the 20th city in the list, with the cities of Bacolod, Makati, Davao, Marikina and Iloilo being named the top five.
Batangas City, Angeles City, Calamba City and General Santos City also fared better than Cebu City in the list published in the March-April issue of MoneySense.
Cities were ranked according to three components which magazine editors said make a place the best place to live: standard of living, quality of life and cost of living.
The ranking of the cities according to certain criteria is not new. MoneySense editor-in-chief Heinz Bulos said they relied on two existing surveys to come up with the list of the best places to live in the country.
2 surveys
The Philippine Human Development Report of the Human Development Network and the United Nations Development Programme and the Philippine Cities
Competitiveness Ranking Project (PCCRP) of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) Policy Center were used as basis of the new list.
The PCCRP, released in August 2005, ranked Cebu City 10th out of 50 metro cities in infrastructure and quality of life and seventh in the area of the cost of doing business.
City Administrator Francisco Fernandez said it would help the City Government to know the details on how the list was drawn so it could improve on the areas where it did not do so well.
“Who are the respondents of this survey? There seems to be a lot of businesses coming in. There is also recent report that 30,000 have been employed in call centers so far this year, aren’t these indicators of livability?” Fernandez said when sought for comment on the ranking.
On the other hand, he said, businesses locating here could mean a higher cost of living in the city because as the demand for housing increases, the price of lots and houses also increase.
“We will be happy to be informed what areas we need to improve in,” he said.
MoneySense is a bi-montly financial magazine published by MoneyTree Publishing Corp. based in Manila. Its maiden issue was released in January 2007.
Different rating
Although Cebu City got a better ranking in the PCCRP, it did not get the same rating in the list of MoneySense because its ranking in the PHDR was taken into consideration.
In measuring a city’s standard of living, the magazine considered factors like above average family income and per capita income, economy, employment rate and cost of doing business.
Quality of life looked into population, demographics, environment, health care, education, safety and leisure.
The magazine, however, did not bother to measure the cost of living because the data available was incomplete and unreliable, Bulos said in the explanatory note of the article.
Earlier this year, the Finance Direct Investment (fDi) magazine of the London-based Financial Times Group ranked Cebu City as eighth of the Top 10 Asian Cities of the Future.
Cebu City also ranked fourth in the list of 10 most cost-effective cities, seventh in the best quality of life category and second in development and promotion, next only to Singapore.
The cities of Singapore and Hong Kong grabbed the first and second spots, respectively. (LCR)
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