The latest U.S. Government Accountability Office\u2019s U.S. territories public debt outlook report to Congressional Committees echoes a familiar tune: the CNMI\u2019s reliance on foreign workers.<\/p>\n
The GAO report specifies that the CNMI, though having decreased its Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, to debt by 16 percent, may have trouble in \u201crepaying public debt in the future\u201d due to the labor shortages. According to the GAO report, the previous GDP to debt ratio was 23 percent in fiscal year 2005 to 26 percent in fiscal year 2007, before ultimately declining to 16 percent for fiscal year 2015.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe reported that [the] CNMI\u2019s economy relies heavily on a foreign workforce and foreign workers comprised a majority of the territory\u2019s workforce in 2015,\u201d the GAO report wrote, specifying that the CW-1 program, or the working visa issued to other nationalities that allow them to work in the CNMI until the program\u2019s shutdown in Dec. 31, 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe analyzed the economic effect of removing all permitted foreign workers from CNMI\u2019s economy using the most recent GDP information available from calendar year 2015,\u201d said the GAO report.<\/p>\n
\u201cDepending on assumptions made, with no permitted workers the CNMI\u2019s GDP in 2015 would have hypothetically declined by 26 to 62 percent,\u201d the report specified, adding that the planned reduction of workers \u201ccould worsen the effect on GDP going forward and hamper the territory\u2019s ability to repay existing debt.\u201d<\/p>\n
The GAO report noted a total public debt outstanding per capita of about $4,199 per person in fiscal year 2007 to about $2,776 per person in fiscal year 2015.<\/p>\n
Amid general revenue fluctuations between fiscal years 2005 and 2015, the GAO reported that the CNMI\u2019s net position for the primary government has been \u201cnegative and generally trending downward.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSpecifically, [the] CNMI\u2019s net position for the primary government declined from a negative $38.1 million as of fiscal year end 2005 to a negative $215.4 million as of fiscal year end 2015,\u201d said the GAO report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The latest U.S. Government Accountability Office\u2019s U.S. territories public debt outlook report to Congressional Committees…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[26,18560,11016,2514],"class_list":["post-261631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-cnmi","tag-congressional-committees","tag-gao","tag-gdp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261631","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\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}