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CEBU CITY: Cebu City, which was earlier named one of
the Top 10 Asian Cities of the Future, made it to the top 20 list of
“Best Places to Live” in the country of business magazine
MoneySense, reported the Philippine News Agency.
The magazine, however, only
ranked Cebu City as the last 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.
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 a basis for the new list.
The PCCRP, released in August
2005, ranked Cebu City 10th out of 50 metro cities in the
infrastructure and quality of life and seventh in the area of the
cost of doing business.
Cebu 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.
He said they need to know who the
respondents are for this survey, adding that a recent report that
30,000 have been employed in call centers so far this year in the
city is a clear indication of the city’s livability.
On the other hand, he said,
business located 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 increases.
”We will be happy to be
informed as to what areas we need to improve on,” he said.
MoneySense is a bi-monthly
financial magazine published by MoneyThree Publishing Corp. based in
Manila. Its maiden issue was released in January 2007.
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.
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