Fight over empty coffers
The Asian crisis has dug deep into the local economy forcing the local government to impose a 13.4 percent across the board reduction in agency and departmental budget. The NMI’s fiscal year’s budget has decreased from $248 million in 1997 to $230 million last year, down to $210 million this year.
Under the $210 million revised budget, there’s at least $60 million in direct contributions from the garment industry. Take this amount out of the revised budget and it leaves about $150 million for payroll and other obligations. It may even be less as the economy contracts further down the balance of this year. At the same time, it is very likely (especially when the government doesn’t have any known plan to support the garment industry) that the days of this sector in the NMI are numbered.
There’s no need to wait for the lawsuit to be litigated. By the time the lawsuit reaches the courtroom–about three years from now–most, if not, all companies buying garments in the NMI would have pulled out from these isles and gone elsewhere. Saipan will eventually continue to fight over MONEY it would no longer have.
Indeed, the effects of the crisis has started showing its ugly face in various quarters. While the Board of Regents and legislators were quick in approving over $400,000 for educational assistance for this semester, the budget people from OMB and the Department of Finance couldn’t provide for this appropriation because revenue generation has slowed down considerably. The lack of revenue generation is economic reality these days well beyond anybody’s control. Thus, students must accept such reality with a sense of understanding that the once bloated local coffers–as we used to know it–is no longer. It has shrunk, substantially.
There’s also the troublesome notion that as this fiscal year progresses, the idea of a Payless Friday isn’t far fetched either for government employees. In fact, austerity measures have been imposed in the public sector while work hours and reduction of manpower has begun since last year in the private sector. So all these measures are tales that something has gone awfully wrong with the local economy. Money for public services, including educational assistance, has contracted beyond our means. There’s no money, period!
So even with the usual NMC antic of sending students up the hill to ask for money, the bottom of the local coffers is dry and fearfully empty these days. A straight answer from the outset that there’s just no money would have settled the issue quietly. Why force a clamor between students and local leadership when the very issue being sought–MONEY–isn’t there to begin with?
