San Fernando, Pampanga—The Office of the Deputy Ombudsman for Luzon had awarded this city a Level 2 Blue Certification for ease of doing business in the region.
The city passed the 87-standard program composed of nine categories namely application form, requirements, procedure, IT-enable system, citizen charter, customers’ convenience, anti-fixing mechanism, business permit, and continuous improvement.
With the compliance of 69%, the city scored a total of 79.31% with the Blue Certification award said Atty. Joseph Marion P. Navarrete, graft investigation officer and member of the certification team of the Ombudsman in Luzon.
Mayor Edwin Santiago said that the Blue Certification award proves that the advocacy for transparency in doing business and good governance is very effective in this 1st class municipality.
Santiago flew to Japan and China recently where he spoke before businessmen who are interested in doing business in the city specially in those manufacturing, agriculture, retail, distribution, business processing, outsourcing, logistic and others.
Santiago is running for the third time re-election in the midterm elections.
Blessed by geography as regional capital and business center of Central Luzon, the city is also home of the annual Christmas lantern festival and re-enactment of crucifixion during Holy Week celebration.
With the theme “Fernandinos First”, the aim is to continually support business growth. This first-class city has an annual income of Php1.5 billion with total population of 306,659 based on the 2015 census,
According to the Ombudsman for Luzon, the Blue Certification was awarded to the city over its systems and procedures in the registration and licensing of businesses and renewal of business permits following the criteria set forth in the assessment manual.
Navarrete said an independent assessor from the Office of the Ombudsman assessed the level of conformance of the city with the prescribed standards.
The assessment process is evidence-based compliance with a standard which must be established by empirical data gathered from document review, contents analysis, key informant interview, and observation, added Navarrete.
The assessment covers the Business Licensing and Permit Division (BLPD) starting January15-19 and the result was released recently.
This first-class component city scored 100% in citizen charter, followed by procedure 92.31%, IT-enabled systems 88.89%, continuous improvement 85.71%, application form and business permit with identical score of 83.33%, customer convince 66.67% and anti-fixing mechanism 58.33%.
The Blue Certification team under the Public Assistance and Corruption Prevention Office of the Office of the Deputy Ombudsman for Luzon are Navarrete, Aida N. Nesnia, associate graft investigation III, and Maria Lolita S. Velaria, graft prevention and control officer III.