[B]ROTA[\/B]\u2014Three as of yet unidentified foreign investors are eying the early steps officials here are taking to develop a casino gaming industry, yet progress on that effort appears to have stalled for now as the local government awaits funding from Saipan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are at least three investors that have already expressed their interest in a casino here,\u201d Diego Songao, chairman of the Rota Casino Gaming Commission said in a Wednesday interview. \u201cAs far as naming those three, I still need to see their actual proposal before I do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The prospective investors, said Songao, include firms from Japan and Korea.<\/p>\n
Since Rota\u2019s leadership won approval from voters to let casinos open on the island, Songao added, the commission has begun crafting regulations for the industry to follow and interviewing consultants to help them put the rules into action. A draft regulation is already complete\u2014based in part on the rules for casinos on Tinian\u2014and the commission has started holding early talks on how to amend it. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to put up a regulation that is amenable both to the people of Rota and the casino operators themselves,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to make a strategy here that will include some of the interest from the investors themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet progress on finalizing the regulations for the moment has stalled as the commission awaits the arrival of a $450,000 loan it received recently from Saipan\u2019s legislative delegation. The money will pay for the hiring of a consultant and related expenses. <\/p>\n
\u201cEverything is on hold right now,\u201d said Songao. \u201cAs soon as we have the money, we can hire a consultant and develop this with the investors. They need to see the regulations before we can do more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, he added, none of the commissioners involved in the effort has received any payment for their work.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of the commission has been paid,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve contributed a lot of materials and things ourselves because we want to see this industry move.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three as of yet unidentified foreign investors are eying the early steps officials here are taking to develop a casino gaming industry, yet progress on that effort appears to have stalled for now as the local government awaits funding from Saipan.<\/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-126323","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\/126323","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=126323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}