Is Iloilo City losing its competitiveness?

Visitors praise Iloilo City’s food, cleanliness, public spaces, and relative calm. Much is deserved. Yet the benchmark is often Manila or Cebu’s congestion, and visitors do not experience the city as residents do. Unreliable water, power interruptions, flooding, and traffic are everyday costs, not just inconveniences.

The question is whether Iloilo’s advantages are weakening against other highly urbanized cities competing for investment and jobs. Decline can begin while headline growth still looks healthy.

In 2025, Iloilo’s economy grew 6.1%, the fourth-fastest rate among 33 highly urbanized cities. Yet resident employment fell 0.1%, placing it 17th. Bacolod gained 1.0%, Davao 3.4%, and Angeles 8.5%. Cebu and Cagayan de Oro also lost resident employment, but that hardly makes Iloilo’s performance satisfactory. City Hall serves residents, not GDP statistics. Where are their jobs?

In the Cities and Municipalities Competitiveness Index, Iloilo City’s Economic Dynamism ranking fell from fourth in 2023 to seventh in 2024, even as its overall competitiveness score improved. Other cities were advancing faster.

Costs raise another warning. On Nov. 19, Iloilo’s top daily minimum wage rose from PHP 550 to PHP 590, exceeding Metro Cebu’s PHP 582, Davao’s PHP 540, and Cagayan de Oro’s PHP 500. Higher pay is desirable. The question is whether productivity, skills, infrastructure, and market access support the city’s relative cost.

The new wage order also tests leadership. The regional wage board held public consultations, including an October hearing in Iloilo. Where was City Hall’s visible, forceful, evidence-based advocacy on a decision affecting investment and employment? Defending the city’s economic interests requires influencing consequential decisions, not merely implementing them.

In September, Iloilo’s inflation was 7.8%, compared with 4.6% in Cagayan de Oro, 6.3% in Davao, and 5.3% in Metro Manila. Cebu was higher at 8.4%. Inflation is not the same as price levels, but sustained differences squeeze households and firms.

The office market may provide the starkest signal. In 2022, Iloilo lacked modern offices when prospective locators needed them. Developers caught up later, but by early 2026, 32% of modern office space — around 119,000 square meters — stood vacant. Cebu’s vacancy was about 16%; Cagayan de Oro’s, 22%.

Longer-term competitiveness raises an even harder question. PSA found that only 70.7% of Iloilo City residents aged 10–64 were functionally literate in 2024, the sixth-lowest rate among highly urbanized cities. Bacolod recorded 77.7%; Cagayan de Oro, 84.4%. How does a relatively prosperous city produce such a result?

Iloilo Province confronted poor literacy with BES Basa, combining teacher training, reading materials, and assessments. It reports Grade 3 reading proficiency rising from about 30% to 90% in pilot areas. Iloilo City was itself included in the province-led reading proof of concept beginning in 2024. Why, then, did City Hall wait until September 2026 to unveil a separately branded Edu-Go program? Why not build visibly on an approach already demonstrating results? What specific deficiencies does the new initiative address that the earlier work did not?

The operating environment compounds these concerns. Only 28.9% of city households had piped-water access at the development plan’s baseline. In August, MORE Power reported rotating outages affecting around 20,000 customers daily as the Visayas grid struggled with generation shortages. In the same month, heavy rains flooded 65 of Iloilo’s 180 barangays. Even without heavy rainfall, high tide flooded major downtown streets in May after a floodgate motor failed. An October World Bank study found overlapping public transport routes, too many vehicles on some routes, and communities left underserved. For businesses, these are not abstractions: backup power, water storage, interrupted work, damaged goods, and delayed deliveries all cost money. These hidden costs weaken Iloilo’s investment proposition.

City Hall can cite digital permits, investment promotion, incentives, and infrastructure projects. Some are useful. Yet activity is not a remedy: permits cannot deliver water, marketing cannot fill offices, and drainage maintenance is not proof that flooding is being solved. Are interventions addressing causes at a sufficient scale to change outcomes?

Leadership also requires listening objectively to bad news. Favorable statistics can be selected to defend almost any record. Responding to uncomfortable evidence by attacking critics or reciting curated achievements would say more about a government’s priorities than the criticism itself. The better response is to investigate and correct what the evidence reveals.

Iloilo retains considerable strengths. These warning signs do not prove lost competitiveness. They do show the risk of waiting until disappearing investment and jobs make the loss undeniable.