Gov. Eloy S. Inos said Friday that the plan to float a multimillion pension obligation bond is shelved or on hold for now, and will remain as a \u201clast resort,\u201d especially now that the process of awarding a license to exclusively develop a minimum $2 billion integrated casino resort on Saipan is moving forward.<\/p>\n
Inos reiterated that floating a pension obligation bond entails \u201chuge interest expense\u201d in addition to the payment of the principal amount.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only will we expect a huge interest expense, the whole principal would have to be repaid and so it\u2019s going to be the future generations that will be [paying] that. So if we can avoid it, I say, let\u2019s put the pension obligation bond project on the shelf for now,\u201d he said in an interview after signing into law a bill that clarifies ambiguities in the Saipan casino law.<\/p>\n
Inos said with the casino option moving forward, the CNMI may not even need to float a pension obligation bond.<\/p>\n
A 2013 law authorizes the government to float up to $200 million in bonds to address the looming exhaustion of the retirement program\u2019s funds by 2019. But since that law\u2019s passage, casino operation on Saipan has been legalized, although a license has yet to be awarded.<\/p>\n
The Inos administration, in collaboration with the Commonwealth Development Authority, had targeted to float bonds of $60 million, $80 million, or $120 million. The POB Act was later amended to allow the use of gross receipt taxes to repay the bonds.<\/p>\n
Unlike revenue bonds, POBs are taxable and command higher interest rates. CDA has confirmed that it is aiming for a higher credit rating so the proposed POB float will get a lower interest rate. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Eloy S. Inos said Friday that the plan to float a multimillion pension obligation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[256,366,26],"class_list":["post-41442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-casino","tag-cda","tag-cnmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41442","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}