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CPA has no position on China pivot
‘Even if all military in Guam were to travel to the CNMI, it’s not enough’
Kimberlyn King-Hinds
Commonwealth Ports Authority board chair Kimberlyn King-Hinds says the agency takes no position on Gov. Arnold I. Palacios’ recent decision to pivot the CNMI’s tourism industry away from its reliance on the China market.
According to King-Hinds, CPA’s job is merely to assess fiscal impacts this policy may have on both CPA and the CNMI as a whole.
“CPA takes no position with regards to the pivot. Given what that particular market share represents in as far as arrivals, our job is to assess that policy’s fiscal impact on our budget and, more importantly, our operations,” she said.
She does concede that, with the pivot, CPA believes there’ll be a cascading economic effect and CPA is doing all it can in its power to brace for such an impact.
“There’s a cascading economic effect, which makes fiscal recovery questionable and we are doing everything we can to find alternative sources of funding, with the intent to remediate and brace for this impact,” she said.
“These past couple of years, we have relied on federal funds to get us through until we return to pre-pandemic levels in as far as arrivals. Those funds will be exhausted [by] the end of this fiscal year, [which is Sept. 30, 2023]. Rates and fees will go up come October because we have to ensure that CPA is self-sustainable without the additional external support. This means it’s going to be expensive to come here. This will likely impact our marketability as a destination,” King-Hinds further explained.
As for the recent progress made by the administration in developing military tourism, King-Hinds said this has been in the works for a while now and, as far as CPA’s position is on this new market, CPA is more focused on the number of arrivals the new market brings in.
However, based on the 2020 Census, King-Hinds said the military market alone would not be able to bring the CNMI back to 2017 levels when the CNMI was completely self-sustainable.
“The idea of military tourism is not new. It has been a topic of discussion and a request to the Department of Defense from the previous administration. CPA doesn’t care where tourists come from. What we are focused on is the number of arrivals, which translates to revenues,” King-Hinds said.
“According to the 2020 Census, there’s approximately 22,000 military personnel and dependents. Even if all these people were to travel to the CNMI, it will not bring us to level that we need to be at. To be sustainable, we need to get back to 2017 levels when we had over 653,000 total arrivals,” she added.
Palacios announced last month his intent to pivot the CNMI away from its reliance on China and to focus on developing military tourism. Palacios has been meeting with Joint Region Marianas representatives to bring more military personnel to Saipan either through possible staycation packages or through more military trainings.
