The U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded three grants totaling $1.4 million to the Commonwealth Ports Authority.<\/p>\n
In his weekly e-newsletter, Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) said one award of $420,000 will fund an update to the existing airport master plan to show current and future needs of the Benjamin Taisacan Manglona International Airport on Rota.<\/p>\n
Two awards of $360,000 each will be used to acquire power sweepers to remove debris from the Rota and Tinian airfields.<\/p>\n
Positive<\/p>\n
Last April, international bond ratings agency Fitch Ratings gave the CPA airport bonds a B+ while CPA seaport bonds have been reaffirmed at \u201cBB-,\u201d or \u201cStable\u201d rating.<\/p>\n
Fitch upgraded CPA\u2019s $12 million of outstanding senior series 1998A airport revenue bonds from B- to B+. CPA airport bonds have been revised from \u201cStable\u201d to \u201cPositive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fitch said this upgrade reflects the \u201csteady improvement in the airport\u2019s operating profile.\u201d This has resulted in high coverage, increased liquidity, and low leverage, says Fitch. And is \u201cnotably stronger\u201d then CPA\u2019s \u201cdistressed financial profile\u201d that began in 2006.<\/p>\n
In addition, Fitch says that low traffic rebounded significantly in fiscal year 2012 and now appears to have stabilized.<\/p>\n
A \u201cpositive\u201d rating reflects adequate financial stability independent of traffic performance. It also reflects, among others, continued improvements in the underlying service area economy and the airport\u2019s ability to maintain and grow its current traffic base.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded three grants totaling $1.4 million to the Commonwealth…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1198,124,3907,3791],"class_list":["post-203687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-commonwealth-ports-authority","tag-cpa","tag-fitch-ratings","tag-last-april"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203687","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\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}