Christopher Concepcion is concerned that the Marianas Visitors Authority has not been receiving its share of the CNMI\u2019s hotel occupancy tax since last December.<\/p>\n
Concepcion, the MVA\u2019s managing director, reported to the MVA board in a meeting yesterday that the agency is short by $2.5 million, which the Department of Finance actually owes MVA in hotel occupancy tax.<\/p>\n
The last allotment the MVA received was in November, he said. Even then, it was just a partial amount.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we are very concerned,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are in communication daily with the Department of Finance on this.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said a lot of changes are happening at Finance right now, with \u201ca new guy in charge,\u201d referring to acting Finance Secretary David Atalig.<\/p>\n
Concepcion said they have been in contact with Finance and that they are fully aware that what MVA does is critical to the entire CNMI economy.<\/p>\n
He said his team is pushing on Finance\u2019s side to prioritize the MVA\u2019s allotment. For now, MVA is going to be fine, but Concepcion said this \u201ccannot stay much longer\u201d if there no allotment.<\/p>\n
Right now, the MVA is trying to make budget cuts, he said, and he is going to propose that to the board.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Concepcion promised to call the acting Finance secretary, while MVA chief accountant Joanne Paraiso will call Finance\u2019s treasurer\u2014a one-two approach that he hopes will work.<\/p>\n
In a separate interview, Concepcion said the last payment they got from Finance was last November and that they received nothing for December, January, and February.<\/p>\n
He said the November payment was not even full as it was only partial.<\/p>\n
The MVA\u2019s average share of the hotel occupancy tax is $1.1 million a month.<\/p>\n
Concepcion acknowledged that there were no flights last November because of Super Typhoon Yutu\u2019s devastation but the tourism industry has been slowly recovering, that tourists are paying the tax and the hotels are collecting and giving it to Finance.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce it gets to Finance, where does it go?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
The immediate impact on MVA, he said, is that they\u2019re delaying payments to vendors.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is our budget. The only budget we get is hotel occupancy tax. We are entitled 80 percent of it,\u201d Concepcion said.<\/p>\n
He said if they don\u2019t get the 80 percent, MVA does not have anything.<\/p>\n
Concepcion said the allotment is critically important to pay their representatives offshore\u2014the Japan, China, and Korea markets.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they are not out there advertising us, then the market forgets us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Concepcion said they are concerned about losing the CNMI\u2019s presence in the market overseas if they do not maintain an active, aggressive marketing campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is so highly competitive out there,\u201d he pointed out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Christopher Concepcion is concerned that the Marianas Visitors Authority has not been receiving its share…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295430","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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}