Jose S. Dela Cruz
AS we all know by now, the people of the CNMI are extremely worried about the continuing economic recession that has continued to adversely affect the livelihood of literally every resident on our islands. We are all hoping and praying that the economy of our islands will begin to turn around and improve during the new year which has just begun. But, as we should know, in order for our economy to improve, CNMI government, business and civic leaders have to sit down first and formulate constructive solutions and then undertake realistic actions that hopefully would begin to activate our insular economy and make it productive once again.
For five long years now — from 2020 to 2024 — the CNMI experienced one of the longest and worst economic recessions in our forty-six year history as a U.S. commonwealth. Our leaders —particularly our government and business leaders — cannot and should not allow the present CNMI economic recession to continue indefinitely and allow it to turn into an economic depression. Because if that happens, a substantial majority of our residents will become jobless, homeless, hopeless and hungry.
We are, therefore, hoping and praying that the fragile economy of our islands will soon regain strength and become vibrant and productive once again, otherwise our experiment in commonwealth self-government might likely fail this time. Our government and business leaders, therefore, need to first immediately revive and strengthen our main industry — the CNMI visitor industry — so that hopefully this year we will actually begin to see, once again, a healthy resurgence in the number of visitors coming to our islands.
As we should also all know by now, literally every sector of the CNMI economy has been stagnant and performing very poorly. This is very evident from the substantial decline in local business activities in just about every type of business operating on the islands. It is also clearly shown by the substantial decline in business gross revenue tax (BGRT) collected by the CNMI Government during the past five years.
The CNMI economic downturn is probably best illustrated by the huge number of abandoned, dilapidated and vacant business buildings that run the length of Saipan’s western shore — from San Antonio Village to Chalan Kanoa, Susupe and Oleai villages, and all the way to Tanapag and San Roke villages. Literally all the people of the CNMI are extremely worried and concerned that things would get worse before we begin to see any ray of light in our economy.
Witness also, for example, the almost complete absence of business activity in our so-called “tourist hotel district” in Garapan from the Grandvrio hotel and the abandoned Imperial Pacific International casino building to the former Hyatt Regency Saipan (now the Sheraton Saipan Hotel). At night, almost all of this tourist hotel district is like a “ghost town.”
Our people are thus worried that if the CNMI economy declines further, our unusually long economic recession would likely result in economic stagnation for the entire CNMI. This scenario is too scary to even contemplate. So, our government and business leaders must never, and should never, allow this possibility to happen. Our government and business leaders must ensure that the possibility of the CNMI falling into an economic abyss will not, and will never, happen. Our government and business leaders, including our civic and community leader (namely, all of us) should join hands and work together earnestly so that we can do everything in our power to turn around our non-performing economy and make it productive and vibrant once again, starting immediately.
We have rested on our laurels for far too long, hoping unrealistically that our poor economy would, on its own, magically turn around. But as we all know, there is no such thing as magic. Like wishful thinking, the economy will not turn around on its own. Only through hard work, through implementing realistic solutions and through actually working as hard as we can to turn around our dismal economy, could we begin to see the CNMI economy—particularly our visitor industry– turn around.
The CNMI simply cannot afford to see one more hotel, one more business enterprise, one more commercial or economic activity close down. The CNMI’s economic bleeding has to stop. It, therefore, behooves all our government and business leaders to immediately stop the constant bickering and disagreement going on among themselves. We must swallow our pride, roll up our sleeves, join hands and begin working together to turn around the CNMI economic recession that we have suffered from, for far too long. The “blame game” has to stop, because if it does not, we will only continue to hurt ourselves and our people. So, the paramount question that our government and business leaders must ask themselves immediately is this:
Are we willing to set aside our differences, and begin working together to turn around our economy by formulating realistic solutions and undertaking realistic actions in order to improve the stagnant economy of the CNMI?
A resident of Upper Navy Hill, Saipan, the author served as the first chief justice of the CNMI Supreme Court.
This post was originally published on here
