{"id":315675,"date":"2020-01-15T06:04:41","date_gmt":"2020-01-14T20:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=315675"},"modified":"2020-01-15T06:04:41","modified_gmt":"2020-01-14T20:04:41","slug":"finance-remits-835962-to-mva-but-still-owes-6-1m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/finance-remits-835962-to-mva-but-still-owes-6-1m\/","title":{"rendered":"Finance remits $835,962 to MVA but still owes $6.1M"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Marianas Visitors Authority board chair Marian Aldan-Pierce presides the MVA board meeting yesterday at the MVA\u2019s conference room. MVA board vice chair Gloria Cavanagh presided over most of the meeting as Aldan-Pierce had a conference call. (FERDIE DE LA TORRE)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Department of Finance had remitted $335,962 in hotel occupancy tax collection last December and $500,000 more this month to the Marianas Visitors Authority, for a total of $835,962, according to MVA managing director Priscilla M. Iakopo yesterday.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the MVA board meeting, Iakopo said that Finance still owes to the tourism body $4.3 million for fiscal year 2019, and $1.7 million for fiscal year 2020, for a total of $6.1 million.<\/p>\n

Iakopo said they used the $500,000 payment to pay their offshore offices\u2019 September invoices in full and that they were able to pay the 31-days-and-over owed local vendors.<\/p>\n

When MVA vice chair Gloria Cavanagh asked about Finance\u2019s promise last month to remit $2.45 million for December and this month, Iakopo explained that the communication she had last December with Finance Secretary David Atalig was that Finance will remit a million dollars, depending on the finalization of the bond that the government is planning to float.<\/p>\n

Iakopo said she talked with Atalig last week, and that he disclosed that they\u2019re still finalizing the bond.<\/p>\n

She said Atalig mentioned that the payment plan is still as scheduled and that once the bonding is complete, they will remit the $1 million to MVA, and every week after that will be the $300,000.<\/p>\n

The managing director said Atalig is hoping to complete the bonding by the end of this month.
\nUnder the law, 80%t of the hotel occupancy tax collection goes to MVA, while 20% goes to the Settlement Fund.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Department of Finance had remitted $335,962 in hotel occupancy tax collection last December and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[212],"class_list":["post-315675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-mva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315675","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=315675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}