Although the increase in its debt limit to $5 million is a welcome development for the Commonwealth Utilities Corp., it is not enough to effectively run a $100 million operation, according to CUC executive director Antonio Mu\u00f1a.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a lot of people $5 million is a lot of money but when you\u2019re trying to run a $100-million operation, $5 million is only 5 percent of the working capital,\u201d said Mu\u00f1a in an interview with Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n
He pointed out that CUC is dealing with increasing fuel costs and trying to pay accumulated past dues.<\/p>\n
\u201cFive million dollars is not going to do it,\u201d the CUC official stressed. \u201cWhat\u2019s I\u2019m concerned with is that it\u2019s not anywhere close to what we\u2019re going to need at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gov. Benigno R. Fitial issued an executive order on July 25 that removes the requirement for any CUC debt over $500,000 to be approved by the Legislature. The order would allow the utility agency to borrow an unlimited amount of money without going through the legislative process.<\/p>\n
Fitial issued another executive order last Wednesday that amended the first executive order. The new version would allow CUC to borrow up to $5 million without first obtaining legislative consent.<\/p>\n
Asked for comment about the $5 million debt cap, Mu\u00f1a said for sure it is an improvement from the half a million dollars.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut at the same time, the reality of the situation with respect to what CUC requires in terms of debt [is that] everybody has to look at what\u2019s in CUC\u2019s books\u2014what is required to bring CUC as far as fixing the financial foundation and come to terms of the reality of what that is,\u201d Mu\u00f1a said.<\/p>\n
He said he is afraid of a situation where, as CUC deals with certain banks or institutions and they get approval from that bank or institutions, that the due diligence effort that bank may have already done with respect to what CUC applied for will be duplicated again in the Legislature, which may not be necessary anymore.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1a said as they make their report to the Public Utilities Commission or to the Legislature, there should be quick review and approval.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Although the increase in its debt limit to $5 million is a welcome development for the Commonwealth Utilities Corp., it is not enough to effectively run a $100 million operation, according to CUC executive director Antonio Mu\u00f1a.<\/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-124966","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\/124966","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=124966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}