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CUC, MPLA monitoring garment situation
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Posted on Mar 16 2005
The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. and the Marianas Public Lands Authority are closely watching the developments within the garment industry, although both agencies say they do not foresee the situation to cause them any major impact.
CUC comptroller Sohale Samari said the utility firm could replace revenues expected to be lost from closing garment factories by hooking up hotels to the CUC grid.
He noted that many hotels are currently generating their own power—instead of using CUC electricity—because CUC did not have enough capacity in the past.
“Should the garment factories leave, we’ll then go and hook up the hotels. So I don’t think [the factory closures] will really give us a negative impact. In this sense, I think we are fairly safe,” Samari said. “But we’re watching the situation very carefully. We want to know the extent that we will be affected, if the garment industry exits.”
Figures on how much CUC will lose with the closures of Sako Corp. Marianas Fashion and La Mode garment factories are not yet available.
For its part, MPLA is currently organizing a meeting with all garment factories that lease public lands
“We need to ask these factories how they stand… in order to better grasp the situation and whether it will affect the MPLA,” public information officer Edward Arriola Jr. said.
Earlier, MPLA compliance division chief John Gonzales said there is at least one textile company that has a public land lease: Concorde Manufacturing Garment Co.
“The MPLA is confident that this company will continue to remit the required lease rentals now and well into the future,” Gonzales said. “It remains to be seen, however, how much of an impact in terms of indirect and/or residual spillover effects on dollar amounts to the MPLA there may potentially be with what is arguably a disconcerting situation with the recent folding up of two garment factories to date in only a span of a few days.”
