Region must reinvent paradigms

Most island governments throughout the Micronesian Region are going through mind-numbing economic hardship, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands of no exception in this difficult experience.

The Federated States of Micronesia ponders its future when compact funds run-out. It is now holding talks with the US federal government about its future relationship. Like the local government here, the FSM national and state governments combined are the largest employers than all businesses put together.

This Interior legacy of placing total reliance on everything that is government into a holy grail of survival must change however difficult the task may be. Such change in attitude is a must given the fact that governments–regardless of whether it is the CNMI, FSM, Republics of Belau and the Marshalls–by their very nature, are not in the business of making profits. Such is the purview of the private sector.

As such, island bureaucrats and politicians must bite the bullet of proactivity and learn anew the integral role and necessity of building lasting partnerships with the private sector in instituting lasting investments be it in Mili, Tobi, Nan Madol-famous Pohnpei and Taga stone-famous isles of the NMI. Unless we institute positive and stable investment policies, our future is bleak individually or collectively where fate is jerked around by negative external and internal influences.

For instance, the issue of a regional airline now before the Association of Pacific Island Legislatures (APIL) will never be resolved with political solutions on a major business operation involving the economics of running a regional airline that covers the vast expanse of the region. If bottomline figures say otherwise, there’s hardly anything we could do with regional political solutions. We would all be flying featherless like robins and wingless too.

If we collectively decide to pitch-in to run a regional airline for the sake of perpetuating political correctness, we would have sucked out what little revenue is left in the coffers of financially strapped island governments to the detriment of their people who also need their money to defray the cost of health, education and public safety. In short, the bird is in our palms. We can set it free with conducive and positive investment policies or quash it to death by perpetuating unworkable approaches of spewing out political solutions to substantive economic concerns. Si Yuus Maase`!