Inspiring Iloilo
ILOILO CITY, Iloilo –The Philippine Statistics Authority reported recently that Western Visayas – comprised of Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Iloilo and Guimaras – was the country’s fastest-growing region in 2025.
Its Gross Regional Domestic Product expanded by 6.4 percent, outpacing the national average of 4.4 percent and even the National Capital Region’s 4.35 percent.
Western Visayas likewise recorded the highest regional per capita growth at 5.7 percent, again outpacing the national per capita GDP of 3.5 percent and NCR’s 3.8 percent.
This is one indication that the standard of living of the region’s residents has improved at a faster pace than the rest of the country.
Powering that impressive growth is Iloilo City, the region’s economic, political and cultural center that is pulling out all the stops to ensure sustained growth and progress over the next few years.
The five-year plan of this city with 104,313 households is indeed ambitious.
Goals include to be among the top three most livable, sustainable and resilient highly urbanized cities in the Philippines; increase job generation and inclusive economic opportunities; strengthen innovation, startups and creative industries; enhance infrastructure, resilience and urban mobility; become a leading smart and sustainable city in the Philippines and further grow as a major investment hub in the Visayas.
But at the rate that Iloilo City is moving on various fronts, this city is well on its way to achieving the targets it has set for itself.
For Iloilo City Mayor Raisa Trenas-Chu, the city’s notable improvement over the past few years would not have been possible without the declared commitment to transparency and accountability and productive partnership with stakeholders including the private sector and civil society groups.
“This did not happen overnight,” stressed Trenas-Chu, “And it all began with a master plan.”
She shared that back in 2007, former Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Trenas tapped experts to craft a development roadmap for the city, with the aim to increase investments, accelerate growth and improve basic services to the people, including infrastructure development.
Once the plan was completed, the local government then proceeded to make sure that it was implemented, continuously from one term to the next thus programs with a long gestation period came to fruition.
“The dream then was for Iloilo City to be a premier city by 2015 and that happened. Now it’s RISE Iloilo and among our goals is to be among the top three most livable cities in the Philippines. We’re already at number five now,” she said.
The RISE to Action Strategy Roadmap with 42 identified programs was developed around three core pillars: rising health and social services, rising economy and rising livability.
These programs were identified with all of the city’s department heads and key personnel providing their input, not just the mayor.
The rigorous and inclusive process that the city leadership went through in crafting the strategy thus ensures that the programs will respond to the urgent needs of the city’s stakeholders and are rooted in reality, thus increasing their chances of being implemented as envisioned.
Trenas-Chu emphasized that having a detailed plan that is achievable while ambitious is one of the keys to Iloilo City’s continuing success, especially as it was a product of a scientific process where the roadmap went through a vetting and refinement process.
Thus what came out has the buy-in of not just the mayor, vice mayor and the councilors but the departments that will be entrusted to see the programs through.
Among the key initiatives to achieve the vision under RISE Iloilo are to continue the upgrading of the public markets, rehabilitate public plazas and parks and further improve health care and educational facilities as part of investing in the next generation of Ilonggos.
She also intends to expand the IT-BPM and digital economy sectors and invest in investment promotion campaigns both here and abroad to invite even more companies to pour funds into the vibrant city.
“In the beginning there were just 200-300 in the business process outsourcing sector. Now we have 52,000 employees with 108 companies,” she said.
Providing the talent pool and skilled workforce are Iloilo’s eight universities and 19 colleges that together produce around 15,000 graduates every year.
“That is also why the real estate companies are here in Iloilo,” she said.
Among the biggest investors in the city is Megaworld Corp., which is estimated to account for almost half of Iloilo City’s office sector.
This is concentrated on its 72-hectare Iloilo Business Park township, which currently hosts 13 office developments with over 205,000 square meters of gross leasable area.
Iloilo City, however, does not want to rest on the strength of its services sector alone and is eager to diversify its economic base and hopefully further reduce the poverty incidence in the city from the already low 3.7 percent.
According to the city’s strategic roadmap 2028, priority areas for investments including manufacturing and processing enterprises, export-oriented industries, tourism-oriented industries, agro-fishery, green projects, solid/water waste management system and social services and facilities including health care and sports and recreation facilities.
Trenas-Chu is also particularly bullish about the growth prospects of the city’s meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions (MICE) sector that has been providing Iloilo with a financial cushion amid the ongoing Middle East crisis that has constricted travel.
“Even with the current crisis, we are still booming. And after the crisis, we will continue to focus on MICE. This is helping our local economy,” she said.
As of the end of 2023, Iloilo City generated P8.29 billion in total tourism receipts, thanks in part to the increasing number of hotel rooms. Currently, that number stands at about 4,000 but more are set to come in as investors see the city’s potential for further growth as more tourists flock to the City of Love.
Iloilo City has long been a favorite of local tourists who are attracted to its multitude of Spanish-era homes, museums, food such as the iconic batchoy, pancit molo and KBL (kadios, baboy, langka) and festivals such as Dinagyang, Paraw Regatta and the increasingly popular Iloilo Bike Festival to showcase its position as the country’s most bike-friendly city.
And with responsive governance, Iloilo City is likewise becoming a top destination of some of the largest names in the country’s corporate sector who appreciate the city’s openness to partnership, adherence to transparency and efforts to make it easier to do business by streamlining approval processes and providing incentives.
These incentives are embodied in the Iloilo City Investment Incentives Code of 2025, Iloilo City Investment Incentive for Specific Areas of Development, the Ordinance Granting Real Property Tax Incentive for Developers of Buildings intended for BPO Use and the Revised Revenue Code of Iloilo City on the Ad Valorem Tax.
Because of these factors, Iloilo City was named the Most Business-Friendly City in 2025 by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry and ranked among the top five most competitive highly urbanized cities in the Philippines in 2024 by the Bureau of Competitiveness Development of the Department of Trade Industry, and the first outside the National Capital Region.
Trenas-Chu shared that the city even has a dedicated office to promote public private partnership projects for big-ticket projects such as that between the city and SM Prime Holdings Inc.
The PPP for the redevelopment of the Iloilo Central Market and Central Market was signed in August 2022 and some P3 billion has already been invested by SM Prime to transform these historic public spaces into more modern, efficient and still thriving centers of enterprise where many micro, small and medium scale entrepreneurs are earning more than they used to.
She said there were ongoing talks with leading companies for more PPP projects. Some of these involve health and transport services, which are all part of the thrust to make Iloilo City a more livable city.
A major enabler of Iloilo City’s programs is the entry of Razon-led More Electric and Power Corp., a subisidiary of Prime Strategic Holdings Inc. which secured in 2019 the 25-year franchise to establish, operate and maintain a power distribution system in the city and province of Iloilo.
Since its takeover of the distribution of the Iloilo City distribution system, it has invested billions in the rehabilitation and expansion of services, with customers now numbering over 100,000 from the original 63,000.
In that short period, More Power has also been able to reduce electricity rates in Iloilo City from among the highest in the country to now among the lowest, making it more attractive to investors.
More Power is not the lone Razon Group investment in the city.
It also operates the Visayas Container Terminal, which features modern infrastructure and equipment for enhanced connectivity, thus boosting regional trade and expanding markets for Western Visayas’ agriculture and fisheries exports.
According to VCT, investments continue to pour into the 22-hectare terminal to service newer generation and larger international vessels thus bolstering sectoral priorities such as bamboo, mangoes and other agri-business products.
Metro Pacific Investments Corp. is another big name that is betting big on Iloilo through Metro Pacific Iloilo Water.
MPIW is the water distribution utility that serves Iloilo City and the municipalities of Oton, Sta. Barbara, Cabatuan, Maasin, San Miguel, Pavia and Leganes.
It is a joint venture between Metro Pacific Water and Metro Iloilo Water District that aims to improve water and sanitation services in its coverage area. It started operations in July 2019 following the signing of the joint venture agreement in November 2018.
Their goal is to provide quality water services to 150,000 customers by 2030.
The Iloilo City government is also entertaining bids for a PPP covering the Iloilo International Airport, ranked among the busiest airports in the Philippines and the primary gateway to Western Visayas.
For Trenas-Chu, Iloilo City continues to attract investments to the city because of the culture of collaboration that has been developed over many years, in that the private companies are assured of a level playing field and transparent rules.
The city’s bids and awards committee even has an active representative from the private sector, as part of transparency goals.
This is also the reason why Iloilo City does not lack for international partners who are more than willing to help it along on its journey toward more robust, inclusive and sustainable growth.
The city leadership goes the extra mile for investors, partners and funders, Trenas-Chu stressed.
“We help them and we treat everyone the same way. We make sure that they are being heard,” she added.
In Iloilo City, projects and even routine procurement requirements are subject to public bidding and the results are open to public scrutiny to ensure that the province will get the best deal and that all awards are above board.
This spirit of collaboration extends not just to the large corporations but to the MSMEs as well who are, for example, heavily involved in the culture and tourism projects of the city – designated Unesco’s Creative City of Gastronomy in 2023, making it the Philippines’ first and only city of gastronomy – that is raring to rise to the next level.
In Iloilo City, good governance is not a mere concept that is easy to say but hard to put into action. Instead, it is the solid pathway to tangible results easily seen and keenly felt in the City of Love.
