Benavente insists on business curbs
Leaders of the Legislature have stood pat in their efforts to control the quality and type of businesses operating on the island despite mounting appeals from the private sector to ease stringent laws that have hampered the growth of the local economy.
House Speaker Diego T. Benavente reiterated the need to put in place these controls during a recent meeting with the Saipan Chamber of Commerce which tackled existing laws widely criticized as anti-business.
Among these are the hiring moratorium on the employment of nonresident workers in businesses other than tourist-related establishments, the three-year residency limit on foreign workers and the $100,000 security deposit requirement to investors.
According to Benavente, these laws were very important only two years ago when the local economy had yet to suffer the impact of the financial turmoil in Asia, its main source of tourism revenues and investments.
But the continuos development and the influx of workers from poor countries in Asia have also impacted on the local infrastructure as well as on the indigenous population.
“I think the position of the leadership is that those controls are still necessary and that there needs to have controlled growth and we need to control the types of business that we want to have here,” he added.
While the Chamber has expressed support for the government policy, some businesses have stressed the effect of having restrictive laws when the island government is attempting to attract new investments under the proposed free trade zone.
“There is any other way in which we can work with the business community to try to improve our economic situation, by trying to entice legitimate business operations. We will work with them,” Benavente said.
He added the Legislature is also bent on passing the legislation that will set up the first ever free trade zone in the CNMI, explaining that it is one of the measures implemented by the government to revitalize the economy.
“We have assured the Chamber that what this leadership and the administration have done so far, show that we are willing and we support the economic growth,” Benavente said, “but the control legislation that are in place will probably continue to be in there because it is still very critical that we do not go into the same situation we were in a few years ago.”
