The only solution for the economic problem that the CNMI is experiencing now is establishing a casino industry on Saipan, according to former Governor Froilan Tenorio.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo other industry can revive, turnaround our economy other than casino,\u201d said Tenorio in an interview with Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
The former governor underscored the need to revive the tourism industry, which he said is really CNMI\u2019s only industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know the garment industry is just supplementing what the revenues that tourism is bringing in. We cannot survive without tourism. We can survive without the garment industry,\u201d he pointed out.<\/p>\n
In order for the Commonwealth to get the economy moving again, Tenorio said, the government must diversify the tourism industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to bring in the tourists\u2026the wealthy tourists. The tourists with money to spend. In my opinion right now most of the tourists that we are getting are the low-income tourists. Of course we welcome them all the time. But we need to attract the tourists with money. Those are the gamblers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
On the closures of many garment factories, the former chief executive said \u201cit is inevitable.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cDid somebody mention during the campaign that there will be shoe factories over here? Never! There will never be a shoe factory here because it is very expensive,\u201d Tenorio said.<\/p>\n
He also cited that it is also inevitable that the minimum wage will have to be increased.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny increase of the minimum wage, even without increase we just can\u2019t compete with the other countries now in the garment industry. We all know that the minimum wage will have to be increased. It will happen not this year, but definitely next year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
All of these garment factories, Tenorio said, will just have to close down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t see them paying $4 or $5 an hour and compete with Vietnam, China, and elsewhere where they are paying their workers 50 cents an hour. No way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the only thing that we can do right now is to get our tourism industry going again. And the only way to do it is [with the] casino,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Tenorio, however, stated that the people of Tinian think that if there will be casino on Saipan it will hurt their industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo way! It\u2019s going to help the casinos on Tinian if we have casinos on Saipan,\u201d he emphasized.<\/p>\n
Asked about how many casinos are possibly needed on Saipan, the former governor responded he can\u2019t think of numbers \u201cbecause I can\u2019t even think of this Legislature passing a casino bill.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The only solution for the economic problem that the CNMI is experiencing now is establishing a casino industry on Saipan, according to former Governor Froilan Tenorio.<\/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-106881","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\/106881","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=106881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}