|
By Rene Q. Bas Editor-In-Chief
POTENTIAL investors—heads of
banks and investment companies—were brought together with
executives of the “dream cities” participating in the Institute
of Solidarity for Asia’s (ISA) Public Governance System (PGS) at
Wednesday’s forum at the Hotel Sofitel in Manila.
All ISA forums, which coincide
with its twice-a-year general conferences, will henceforth include
potential investors, ISA founding chairman and CEO Jesus Estanislao
told The Manila Times.
ISA awards PGS-participant cities
and provinces, and gives formal recognition for their successful
efforts in observing best practices in governance. The local units
are graded on the basis of a scorecard borrowed from the Harvard
Business School’s good-management scorecard for corporations.
“There is more to the Public
Governance System than recognition, public acclaim and crowns of
glory,” Estanislao, a former finance secretary during the Aquino
presidency, said.
“At the end of the public
governance rainbow must be pots of gold. There must be jobs created,
livelihood opportunities opened up. There must be significant
investments flowing in,” he added.
He said, as though reviewing the
very aims of his internationally supported ISA foundation:
“Markets are made more open by good governance practices. They
have to be more fiercely competitive to bring down the gains of
productivity and quality enhancement to the mass of our citizens.”
Government units that respond to
ISA’s invitation to be a PGS partner must agree to envision
themselves in the overall “Philippines 2030 Roadmap” that charts
the way for Filipinos to reach 2030 as a happily productive,
prosperous, well-governed and respected democratic nation.
The city or province’s
executives, councilors, as well as representatives of civil society,
then agree, in a signed covenant, to work toward the realization of
a specific goal for the city or province.
More than 40 cities and provinces
are ISA-PGS partners. Thirty-three institutions and civil society
groups, including the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the
Philippines, are ISA’s institutional and sectoral partners.
The Center for International
Private Enterprise in Washington, DC—a non-profit affiliate of the
US Chamber of Commerce and one of the four core institutes of the US
National Endowment for Democracy—funds ISA’s core programs. The
Public Government System program is one of these.
|
