kaban galing - front cover - galing pook

12 NAAWAN, MISAMIS ORIENTAL
Entrepreneurship in Governance
Improving Local Government Income through Municipal
Economic Enterprise and Development Office (MEEDO)
THE municipality of Naawan, Misamis Oriental, was operating on very
limited resources to cater to the needs of 17,431 residents.
As a fifth-class municipality, with 3,684 households and a 2% growth
rate, Naawan needed to optimize its use of resources as well as
increase local income. An assessment of its public economic enterprises
showed that the local government was operating on a negative income
and unable to recover even the cost of operations. The net effect was
that, instead of serving as a vehicle to improve income, these public
economic enterprises were draining the scarce resources of the
municipality.
To make matters worse, the operation of public economic
enterprises were being managed by the municipal treasurer’s office
and municipal engineer’s office, which have their own tasks and priorities.
So the public economic enterprises were often relegated to secondary
priority. Hence, services provided were poor and unable to respond to
the demand for more efficient services.
Turnaround
This prompted the local government to establish the Municipal Economic
Enterprise and Development Office (MEEDO). The MEEDO was
composed of various personnel seconded from the treasurer’s office
and Engineer’s office and was headed by a manager. Its primary task
was to ensure better operation of public economic enterprises excluding
collection activities except for the public market cash ticket collection.
By pooling together these personnel, the local government did not incur
additional expenditure. But the creation of the MEEDO allowed the
municipality to provide better and more efficient services.
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