Senate President Victor B. Hocog (R-Rota) noted that the feared Senate shutdown now appears unlikely, with the Legislature authorizing the central government to obtain a $15-million loan from the Marianas Public Land Trust fund.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Saipan Tribune, Hocog noted that Senate shutdown is unlikely but it will be up to the MPLT loan recently authorized by the Legislature when the Senate voted 7-1 to pass House Speaker Blas Jonathan \u201cBJ\u201d Attao\u2019s (R-Saipan) House Bill 21-44 HD1, HS1.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe might not move forward with the closure of the Senate,\u201d Hocog said in an interview.<\/p>\n
In May, Hocog told the Executive Branch that the Senate would be closed from August through September due to the reduced allotments, to ensure that the remaining funds would last the Senate until the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30, 2019.<\/p>\n
Hocog said that shutting down the Senate is now a last-ditch effort for the Legislature with the expected enactment of the MPLT loan, coupled with a reported increase in tax collection numbers.<\/p>\n
Finance Secretary David Atalig told Saipan Tribune in a previous interview that the department is expecting to collect $50 million in the fourth quarter, or roughly $17 million monthly for the last three months of the fiscal year 2019 ending on Sept. 30, 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are projecting to collect at least $3 million per month or an additional $9 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2019,\u201d he said, referring to the projected excise tax collections for the remainder of the fiscal year.<\/p>\n
Compared to fiscal year 2018 within the same period, Atalig emphasized that there was a $5-million increase in excise taxes from last year\u2019s collections.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom October 2018 to June 2019, [the Division of Customs] collected about $35 million in excise tax. For the same period last year\u2026Customs collected close to $30 million\u2014an increase of over $5 million. In fiscal year 2018, we collected over $40.1 million whereas we anticipate to collect $44 million this fiscal year,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Hocog praised \u201cthe hard work of the secretary of Finance for his aggressive collections that enabled us to stay afloat.<\/p>\n
Hocog told Saipan Tribune, \u201cI am very positive that the fiscal year 2020 would not start with austerity measures.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is why, he said, he is pushing for the passage of the CNMI appropriation bill, \u201cbecause [by doing that], we provide more for other government employees.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senate President Victor B. Hocog (R-Rota) noted that the feared Senate shutdown now appears unlikely,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-304233","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\/304233","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=304233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}