Must change old approach

We’ve seen see-saw debate on the question of a regional airline not necessarily that the current carrier has balked on its commitment to service the far-flung islands of Micronesia, but primarily because politicians and bureaucrats have approached the issue from a political standpoint rather than the more appropriate premise of a business operation.

However an issue that involves the economics of running a large regional carrier, our men of wisdom have viewed such operations perhaps with the equivalence of a public office that can afford operating under huge deficit spending. Not quite the case when it comes to a major business sector that constantly reviews bottom line figures to stay afloat.

The trouble in most Pacific island governments is the inability or reluctance of leadership to view issues such as the burgeoning controversy from the standpoint of economics. It ruins any deliberative effort to be able to present issues on their merits because local leaders are stuck with their old paradigms of imposing political solutions to substantive economic concerns.

In the case of the NMI, politicians and bureaucrats have approached this question without regard to pinning down the real culprit: is the problem the current carrier or our inability to get our acts together? For instance, why is it that it costs tourists 2000 to 5000 Yen more to visit the NMI while the air fare is the same between points in Japan to Guam and the Marianas? It goes to illustrate then that the issue isn’t the current regional carrier as much as the inability of key players in the tourism industry here to get their acts together. Friends, herein lies the problem and not the regional carrier!

Any airline, including the current regional carrier in the Asia Pacific region, has seen profits plummet as a direct result of the Asian contagion. None of them created the regional contagion that subsequently forced most people to postpone family or corporate vactions. And the issue need not require that one be a genius to grasp the full depth of the crisis. Furthermore, when Japan’s economy took a plunge rendering nearly three (3) million people jobless, common sense dictates that most would guard their savings and stay closer to home than brave bankrupting family budget during “bad economic times”.

Finally, bureaucrats and politicians must buckle down to economic realities in the Asia Pacific region and how they influence the economic foundation of resource-poor island governments. Doing so would allow their nimble minds to see with clearer vision the struggle of major industries to stay solvent amidst the destruction of the Asian contagion against every iota of substantive readjustments they have made to muddle through it all. In fact, we seem to have missed the real issue in this debate: What have we done to help both the regional carrier and current investors survive the deepening crisis right here at home?