Gov. Ralph DLG Torres said the CNMI\u2019s economy is key to whittling down the government\u2019s $144.7-million debt as the governor last week announced its $258.1-million proposed budget for fiscal year 2019.<\/p>\n
Citing a 2017 Government Accountability Office report, a statement from the Torres administration said that the economy was the key to settling the CNMI\u2019s total public debt of $144.7 million as recorded for fiscal year 2015. <\/p>\n
While Torres\u2019 budget did not specifically set aside a certain amount for the debt, the statement noted that the CNMI public debt was $251.7 million for fiscal year 2005, indicating a drastic decrease of public debt at 42.5 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis figure does not include the governor and Legislature\u2019s commitment to addressing several longstanding government obligations such as land compensation and settlements over the last two years, which amount to an additional decrease in the debt by about $50 million,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
A few months ago, Torres signed into law a bill that appropriates money obtained from the Casino Gross Tax Revenue into several land compensation judgments, the largest being $16 million. Each land compensation case accrues interest on a daily basis. According to House Ways and Means Committee chair Rep. Angel A. Demapan (R-Saipan), the Legislature has appropriated over $116 million for outstanding obligations in land compensation, judgments, retiree benefits, and to the Public School System and the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese numbers outline the CNMI\u2019s economic growth in the past decade, particularly since 2015, and supports the governor and our community\u2019s goal to be both financially prudent and secure,\u201d the statement added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve done a lot together as a community, but we are cognizant that there are still a lot of challenges. The governor and his administration will continue to pursue policies and initiatives that help maintain our economic viability so that we can bring down the debt even further for the next generations and create more opportunities for families now,\u201d concluded the statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Ralph DLG Torres said the CNMI\u2019s economy is key to whittling down the government\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[20,26,7100,19437],"class_list":["post-273677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-budget","tag-cnmi","tag-government-accountability-office","tag-means-committee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273677","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=273677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}