The Canada-Philippines Partnership Project for Good Urban Governance (CPPPGUG) supports the Millennium Development Goals and the continued thrust of the Philippines towards decentralization of power to local governments and empowerment of communities in local decision-making in order to address poverty.

CUI advisor Terrance Harvey Boutilier stresses a point during his presentation as his co-advisor Partricia MacPherson listens.

Over the course of the CPPPGUG implementation, the Metropolitan Iloilo Development Council or MIDC (particularly Iloilo City) and Guimaras provincial leaders have become more comfortable with and confident in the benefits of inter-local cooperation, that it is becoming standard for solving shared regional challenges. A new mindset of urban-rural linkages and inter-local cooperation for local economic development is emerging. In the past year in particular, a real change in thinking has happened in integrating exurban and rural issues into governance of the urban region with the creation of the Guimaras-Iloilo City Alliance (GICA).

The City of Iloilo and the Province of Guimaras have formed the Guimaras-Iloilo City Alliance (GICA), an alliance cemented through a formal memorandum of understanding, to collaborate on tourism promotion and related infrastructure development such as ports and roads systems. This move will help ensure competitiveness of the area by focusing on key development priorities such as tourism promotion and infrastructure development. The “urban” and not just “municipal” thinking of the political leaders can now better integrate issues of poverty reduction and gender equality into policymaking and planning.

The Canadian Urban Institute (CUI) recognizes these developments as impacts of the partnership and capacity development activities it has done to the two partners. To support the establishment of GICA and enhance the sustainability of the region’s economic, political, educational and cultural center, it puts premium on the need to build the capacity in inter-local government cooperation for LED. Canada has a rich knowledge base for successful inter-local government cooperation that can be good templates for developing the GICA.

In support of coordinating the delivery of the local economic development services in an effectively manner through the GICA, this capacity development intervention through coaching from Canadian Advisors Terrance Harvey Boutilier and Patricia MacPherson, the Canada-Philippines Forum on Building Local Economic Alliances was designed to ensure that the goals of GICA are discussed and that actions are properly laid out to achieve this vision and goals.

Objectives

The capacity development engagement will focus on the following objectives:

1. Learn and share Canadian best practices on regional economic development initiatives, resource mobilization and the introduction of innovative tools and techniques for business development and improvement process such as Business Improvement Areas (BIA), community business development, heritage conservation, tourism promotion, urban planning, zoning and development controls;

2. Assist MIDC, Iloilo City and Province of Guimaras in developing their capacity in coming up with the common economic indicators/benchmarks for their LGUs;

3. Identify LED actions important to GICA and that are related to regional economic development, investment attraction, expansion and monitoring in order to enhance competitiveness of Iloilo City, MIDC and Guimaras.

Philippines learns from Canada on economic alliance-building

Ben Jimena sums up the key actions for GICA

“Public-private partnership” stands out among the many features of local economic alliance-building in Canada and similar efforts in the Philippines must employ the same so local economic alliances can be built efficiently.

This was one glaring lesson extracted from the Canada-Philippines Forum on Building Local Economic Alliances, an activity hosted by the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI) in cooperation with Iloilo City and the province of Guimaras, last March 1.

While Philippine local economic development initiatives have some features of private-public partnership, there is still a need for integration and stakeholder-ownership of the plans and programs so they can be effectively implemented.

A successful private-public partnership should bring the benefits of employment creation, community wealth, tax revenue for the local government, strengthening of the local government’s competitive advantage and a sense of professional pride, says Terrance Harvey Boutilier, senior planner for special projects of the City of Kitchener in Ontario.

Boutilier and Partricia MacPherson, business development officer of the City of Kitchener, were the two CUI advisors who presented Canadian cases during the forum, the hosting of which had funding assistance from the Canadian International Development Agency.

In particular, Boutilier shared cases on Regional-City Planning Process in the Waterloo Region of Southern Ontario, Business Improvement Areas in the City of Kitchener and Heritage Planning in Ontario. MacPherson presented the cases of Regional Economic Development in Canada: The Case of Waterloo Region in Southern Ontario and Canadian Economic Development Best Management Practices.

McPherson stressed that in local economic development, three things are vital -- data management, business attraction and business retention. She also underscored, among others, the need of making data collection a priority, understand the community, preparation of marketing strategy and materials, and identification of local opportunities for clients, both public and private.

Meanwhile, the planning process in the Philippines was noted to involve too many people, churning out so many plans that are not linked to each other, explains Francis Gentoral, CUI Philippines regional manager, before the close of the forum.

Gentoral extracted lessons from the presentations made by the two Canadian advisors and Philippine planners on various local economic alliance-building practices in their respectively countries.

Iloilo City planning chief Jose Roni Peñalosa shared the city’s economic development programs while Evan Anthony Arias and Ruben Corpuz presented the competitiveness of and local economic development in Guimaras, respectively.

From the presentations, it was learned that regional planning in Canada is clearly mandated and involves the strong participation of the private sector, which covers growth management, transportation, waste management, infrastructure, sewage treatment and environmental protection.

In the Philippines, on the other hand, inter-local government and regional planning is not mandated by the national government and similar courses of action are often the own initiatives of local government units. Moreover, all planning are government-led and if there is private-sector involvement, these are sporadic and not consistent.

Both panels agree that information is vital in planning but what made Canada’s practice more effective is the availability of data needed for the process, its prioritization of data collection and understanding of its clients and target market.