Lamitan City’s 6th seal of good local governance eyed to boost local investment climate

COTABATO CITY —  The local government unit of Lamitan City in Basilan province got its sixth Seal of Good Local Governance from the central office of the local government department, many in the business sector consider a big boost to the area’s investment climate.

Mohammad Pasigan, chairman of the Bangsamoro Regional Board of Investments, told reporters on Sunday that they can use the six SGLG citations the Lamitan City LGU had received from the Department of the Interior and Local Government as a “magnet” to entice local and foreign investors to put up feasible projects in any of its 45 barangays.

“With Lamitan City LGU’s six SGLG awards, we will not have any problem telling investors that there is a very functional LGU in Lamitan City that they can rely on in helping see to it that their capital inputs for viable projects are safe," Pasigan said.

Lamitan City Mayor Roderick Furigay received their sixth SGLG, since 2015, from Local Government Secretary Benjamin De Castro Abalos Jr. during a symbolic rite at a function facility in the Manila Hotel in Manila last Thursday.

“Investors from outside the Bangsamoro region and from abroad are hesitant to put up businesses in areas where LGUs are inefficient. Surely, they will have a good impression about Lamitan City that has garnered six SGLG awards since 2015,” the lawyer-entrepreneur Ronald Hallid D. Torres, chairman of the Bangsamoro Business Council, with mixed Muslim and Christian members, said on Sunday.

Pasigan and Torres separately told reporters that they can confidently tell prospective investors that there is a very functional LGU in Lamitan City, using its six SGLG awards as proof.

The DILG’s yearly grant of SGLG to a nominated municipal, city or provincial government is based on efficient handling by local executives of government funds, remarkable accomplishments in domestic peace and security efforts, environmental-protection and humanitarian programs for constituent-communities.

The DILG central office does not grant SGLG to any LGU whose officials are either involved in criminal activities, or have pending criminal cases in courts, or are being prosecuted for graft and corruption by the Ombudsman.

No other LGU in the Bangsamoro region, covering six provinces that has 116 towns and three cities, had received six SGLG awards from the DILG central office in a span of only seven years.

Two senior members of the Lamitan City Business Chamber, Clarito San Juan and Rima Hassan, on Sunday said in separate statements that they were elated after their LGU received its sixth SGLG last Thursday.

“That can help project a good image of our city to capitalists outside of Basilan,” Hassan said.

San Juan said there are thousands of hectares or lands in Lamitan City that are suitable for large-scale propagation of Cavendish banana, soya, and hybrid corn that can be marketed in other Mindanao regions and abroad.