Economic summit scheduled

An economic summit that aims to identify industries to either introduce or further develop within the CNMI has been set for April 2, 2009.

The economic summit—an idea supported by members of the Legislature and community members—will be sponsored by the CNMI Department of Commerce and the Commonwealth Development Authority.

According to Commerce Secretary Michael Ada, the summit will be preceded by a public session and a government session, culminating in a summit on April 2, 2009.

The identification of industries that will replace the garment industry and supplement the visitor industry will be based on assessments of current strengths and barriers in the CNMI. The public session will be geared toward soliciting information from the public as to the strengths and barriers of doing business in the CNMI, as well as potential industries to be focused on in the CNMI for purposes of long-term economic sustainability.

The government session will be aimed at providing recommendations to the Legislative and Executive branches to ensure that the CNMI is conducive to these identified industries. The actual summit will culminate on April 2, 2009 and be geared toward providing the outcomes of both the public session and the government sessions.

“The goal is not to rehash what the problems are. …It is an effort to pro-actively identify a focused plan on development of new industries,” said Ada.

Ado noted that the goal of this economic summit differs from the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy project, which is geared toward identifying project priorities rather than industries.

Ada emphasized that this effort will be done in partnership with the private sector, using focus groups before summit sessions “to ensure that the government is not doing this in a vacuum.”

“While some may say that the private sector should spearhead this effort and could probably do it better than the government, it is my belief that this should be done as a partnership, because the government does play an important role in economic development,” said Ada. “Private sector businesses are concerned with trying to survive in tough economic times and shouldn’t bear the burden of economic development.”

Further summit details will be released in the coming weeks as the CDA and the Department of Commerce move forward with the summit project. Commerce and CDA will be including the public in the planning sessions. [B][I](PR)[/I][/B]