The BDC-CDA solution

Former Business Development Center chief Jack Peters is only half right. The Business Development Center should be removed from the Northern Marianas College, all right. But it should not be resurrected under the auspices of the Commonwealth Development Authority. The Business Development Center should be abolished outright. Period.

The government should not be in the business of training potential entrepreneurs. True entrepreneurs don’t need the government’s help. True entrepreneurs are self-made and self-reliant men and women who want the government off their backs.

When the late Jose C. Tenorio, one of the CNMI’s most successful local businessmen, founded Joeten Enterprises shortly after World War II, he did so without the help of a Business Development Center. Indeed, he succeeded without the help of a Northern Marianas College — with only a rudimentary grade school education. He succeeded mostly on his own efforts — without the government’s business training and education.

The government cannot even balance its budget and erase the deficit. The CNMI government is as much as $80 million in the red already. The government has also consistently failed to offer reliable utility services at a reasonable price. Government is inherently inept, incompetent and efficient. Why should we believe that it can succeed in churning out highly successful and productive local entrepreneurs?

The Business Development Center is a waste of precious — and dwindling — government resources. It is a waste of local taxpayer money. Perhaps worst of all–it may be egregiously unfair.

Why should a taxpaying CNMI business subsidize a potential business competitor through the Business Development Center? Why should a private business be forced to pay for the business consulting services of a potential rival?

If a would-be entrepreneur needs business consulting services, let him pay for it himself. Let him contact our economist Ed Stephens Jr, who offers such management services for a fee. Why should CNMI taxpayers be forced to finance the business ambitions of others?

Save the government some money and protect the beleaguered CNMI taxpayer. Abolish the BDC — and, while we are at it, abolish the Commonwealth Development Authority as well. If a local business needs financing, let it go apply for a loan at Bank Of Guam like the rest of us.

Privatize. Hold the government to its proper and legitimate public functions only.