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The year ahead
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Posted on Jan 04 1999
Certain government officials have been making some rather rosy (and lousy) economic forecasts lately. They somehow think that the economy will get better this year. Curiously, though, they never specify exactly why this should happen, except that the Japanese Yen has surged recently, although the Japanese economy itself, after nearly seven years of protracted recession, still has not bounced back yet.
Economists, however, will tell us an altogether different story — and so will the businessmen actually battling it out at the front lines of CNMI commerce. The economy will not get better, they say; indeed, it is far more likely to get much worse, attest both the Saipan Chamber of Commerce and the CNMI Hotel Association.
After all, the whole of Asia is still very much immersed in recession. Japan is sick. Hong Kong is suffering. Vietnam is down. Indonesia is weak. Korea is ill. Russia had a stroke. Malaysia has the flu. The Philippines is depressed, and Thailand has the claps.
There is simply no reason — no evidence — to believe that the CNMI economy should rebound handsomely this year. Even the CNMI garment industry, which was relatively buoyant last year, faces increasing threats from all sectors: from the Department of Interior, from overseas currency devaluations, from global tariff reductions, from cutthroat international competition — and last but certainly not least, from our own incompetent leadership (Speaker Diego comes to mind) bent on destroying the only industry now sustaining our economy.
But as false and hollow as these rosy government forecasts might be, let the politicians and bureaucrats go ahead and keep on prognosticating Pangloss optimism, for it does us no good to advertise the fact that the economy should keep on slumping.
And who knows? Maybe some naive foreign investors might actually believe them.
(I know: I should take my own advice, but I’m too honest.)
