Philippine Province leverages GIS for economic development
The island-province of Guimaras is located in the western part of the Visayas island, the Philippines’ second largest island next to Luzon. When Guimaras gained its full-pledged status as a province back in May 1992, the province found itself in the list of the top 20 most poorest provinces in the Philippines – a status which Governor Nava is proud to say they have graduated from.
“A large-scale GIS project such as the Real Property Tax Assessment, had cost us Php 27 million (USD 638,000), and that amount is so much for a poor province like Guimaras, but we decided that investing on this technology could be the future – and looking at where we are now, GIS has really helped us a lot”.
According to Governor Nava, one of the very first GIS projects of the province was a GIS-based taxation system which aims to improve the taxation in the province by automating real property data and using aerial photos to establish land information as a basis of computing taxes. Taking off from investing on a GIS-based real property tax assessment, the provincial government realised that GIS can be used in other government services as well henceforth, it brought about the investment on many other GIS applications on land-use planning, policing, environment management, and public health among others.
One application that turned to be successful is on land use planning where the province created thematic maps to guide spatial analysis in determining the optimum utilisation of the land. The province was able to provide GIS mapping services to municipal governments in crafting their own municipal land use plans that are spatially-integrated with the provincial plan. The resulting application paved the way for the formulation of land use policies that guided the development of the island-province.
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