Kudos to CPA’s efforts

The Commonwealth Ports Authority has begun discussion cutting out proposed fees that would have kicked-in under Fiscal Year 2000. This proactive attitude to partake in reviving the sagging tourism industry should be the new paradigm in the working relationship between the public and private sectors.

In other words, it takes both hands (private and public sectors) to do any decency in protecting current investments that now feeds the local coffers as we seek for some breathing space to figure out our strength in terms of future investments or economic diversification.

As CPA takes the proverbial first step in this direction, it still needs the other hand–the hotels and travel agencies–to forge a coordinated effort to sustain making the NMI a competing destination among Pacific islands in tourism. Coordination is even more vital given that traveling Asians are still looking at the same US
Dollar to determine which destination would grant them the greatest mileage for their hard earned money.

As this effort gains momentum, policymakers need to retreat in order to reassess the damaging effects of protectionist policies that have trumpeted discordant signals to potential investors. In other words, while the NMI may successfully approve the much touted “free trade zone”, protectionist policies approved in recent years have spawned suspicion among potential investors in our ability to say one thing and doing the exact opposite. We need to rectify grand inconsistencies in what we trumpet versus strangling policies now in our books.

More so than ever before, all sectors must make it a point to meet intermittently to thrash out differences in proposed policies in that the notion of forcing politically correct measures must first receive the benefit of reasoned analysis in order to secure an understanding of its consequence when they reach the implementation stage. Indeed, it seems that the biggest inadequacy in the legislature is the inability of lawmakers to conceptualize the consequence of ill-conceived policies. It has tended to ad hoc approaches rather than the more lasting thorough analysis of policies approved in recent years. These policies are shortsighted at best and such instability has become the most problematic issue among current and potential investors.

Kudos to CPA for demonstrating what leadership is all about in its continuing efforts to become a part of the solution rather than the problem. Congratulations!