A year and a day after Super Typhoon Yutu hit the CNMI last Oct. 24, 2018, the price freeze on basic commodities that was declared for the CNMI to prevent price-gouging was finally lifted last Friday.<\/p>\n
Acting governor Arnold I. Palacios issued Executive Order 2019-14 last Oct. 25, 2019, to lift the suspension of prices of select commodities in the CNMI. The price freeze had been active since Oct. 27, 2018.<\/p>\n
The order to freeze the prizes of basic commodities in the CNMI was declared a day after Gov. Ralph DLG Torres declared a state of significant emergency through Executive Order 2018-16 on Oct. 26, 2018.<\/p>\n
The \u201cprice freeze shall last until rescinded or until the declaration of emergency or disaster are terminated, whichever occurs first,\u201d EO 2019-14 noted, citing the initial price freeze declaration order.<\/p>\n
The freeze was intended to prevent price gouging, or the act of illegally increasing the prices of goods based solely on shortages caused by natural disaster or other emergencies.<\/p>\n
Gas, kerosene, diesel fuel, natural gas, and all other chemical fuels, whether gaseous, liquid, or solid, were included in the price freeze, including all types of food, water, beverages, and ice; clothing; flashlights, lamps, lanterns, candles, light bulbs, and other means of illumination; generators, cables, wires, electrical batteries, and other similar equipment for the generation or transmission of electrical power; all appliances for storage and preparation of food; tools typically used for construction, ground clearing, or home repairs, including electrically, chemically, and manually powered tools; all bedding items; and housing rentals, including apartments and condominiums and other commodities from rising.<\/p>\n
A person or business who is found guilty of price gouging can be prosecuted criminally or civilly, and can face up to a $10,000 fine and up to one year in jail for each violation.<\/p>\n
The state of significant emergency for the CNMI since Super Typhoon Yutu remains in place and has yet to be lifted. According to a communication from the Governor\u2019s Office, it just renewed the emergency declaration through Executive Order 2019-12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A year and a day after Super Typhoon Yutu hit the CNMI last Oct. 24,…<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-311038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311038","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=311038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}