Free Trade Zone Dilemma

The Free Trade Zone legislation is a good by-product of the figment of our imagination. It allows for optimistic financial projections of various investments in the zone. It also lifts our beaten sense of optimism in dealing with severe decline in revenue generation brought about by the negative confluence of the Asian Crisis and investment instability wrought by a federal takeover plan.

But at some point in the near future, this measure needs to be mirrored against reality in similar undertakings between the Pearl of the Orient and the Land of the Rising Sun. In other words, as US businessmen head to the Philippines to take advantage of new and more friendlier investment policies, Japan begins a regional plan to build a free trade zone into an Asian Economic Block. Would our cherished version ever make it under such regional undertakings by far more sophisticated economies?

About the only positive aspect of the FTZ is the fact that it had everybody engaged in some form of serious economic planning. It had us acknowledging the obvious fickleness of our tourism industry often at the mercy of external influences not to mention strangling policies from within. It has also sent us reeling for answers, any answer, to make sense of the devastating effects of the Asian Crisis and how investors must have negatively assessed the NMI as an investment venue often the victim of ill-conceived federal policies riddled with ultra-insensitivity.

So as we bang-up the wedding bells, so to speak, feeling comfortable and confident that we’ve finally reached some answers to our deepening economic woes, a large portion of the bell in the Marianas Bell tower seem fearfully muted. Hardly anybody noticed the muffled ring though most intelligent people going through their daily routine quiz the strange sound that seemed awfully restraint. Has the bell cracked, if so, can it be repaired and how soon or who’s going to fix it?

Yes, the bell of investment has cracked wide open, thus the strange resonance from atop the tower. It was cracked by the triple negative influence of the Asian Crisis, investment instability spurred by “now you see it, now you don’t” federal policies and locally approved strangling regulations that stifle rather than encourage investments for both current and prospective investors. It goes without saying that no matter the refinement in the FTZ, the NMI has an awfully steep uphill journey to luring the most important common denominator to fill its designated FTZ: Investors!

What can we do under the circumstance? Work on investment stability and more tax breaks for lasting investments. Either we do it now or forever lose the benefits of reconstructing and rebuilding the economic future of these isles. Si Yuus Maase`!