The Marianas Visitors Authority will be spared from a budget cut, according to Gov. Benigno R. Fitial.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know MVA needs more money so I\u2019ve already asked [Finance] Secretary [Eloy] Inos to waive the budget cut,\u201d Fitial announced before the MVA board members and staff during Friday\u2019s proclamation signing declaring May as tourism month. <\/p>\n
At the same time, Fitial assured MVA of additional funds.<\/p>\n
Fitial said that MVA would be getting more funds from the administration, including a $400,000 incentive for Northwest Airlines.<\/p>\n
He said that since the government could not give the money to NWA directly due to procurement concerns, it would be released to the MVA Tokyo office instead.<\/p>\n
Following a meeting with Fitial last February, NWA introduced a second Tokyo flight to Saipan effective April 25.<\/p>\n
Further, Fitial said that he has instructed Public Lands Secretary John S. Del Rosario to identify funds for MVA\u2019s use.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s additional budget for MVA,\u201d said Fitial. <\/p>\n
MVA receives a $7-million budget under the continuing resolution, Public 13-24. Less the constitutionally mandated deductions for deficit payment and Office of the Public Auditor, MVA only gets to keep a net budget of $5.9 million.<\/p>\n
MVA has been getting this budget allocation since fiscal year 2003.<\/p>\n
As of last month, MVA said that it has a working budget of $5.6 million for FY 2006.<\/p>\n
When the Fitial administration slashed the government budget from $213 million to $198 million early this year, the MVA was asked to cut its budget by $1.1 million. The agency had initially obliged but warned that its promotional or advertising program would be adversely affected. <\/p>\n
In a meeting last month, the MVA board had decided to restore most cuts, informing the Executive Branch that it could only reduce its working budget by $300,000.<\/p>\n
MVA officials said that, instead of being deducted, the agency should be getting more money to do its job to promote the CNMI.<\/p>\n
They said that funds are most needed now in view of the Fitial administration\u2019s goal to increase the annual tourist arrivals from the current 500,000 level to 1 million by 2008.<\/p>\n
Right now, the MVA board said the agency is outspent several times over in advertising by its counterparts in Guam and Hawaii. <\/p>\n
For fiscal year 2007, the MVA board is asking for $11.3 million budget with the additional $4 million reserved for advertising and promotion of the CNMI overseas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Marianas Visitors Authority will be spared from a budget cut, according to Gov. Benigno R. Fitial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}