The amount covers three pay periods for the month of December, and the governor expressed optimism that funds would be available to avert a payless payday during the holiday season.<\/p>\n
“We’re looking into other sources to raise revenues,” Tenorio said, without giving details how his administration plans to raise funds, as he admitted that the commonwealth is in a tight situation in coming up with the money to pay government workers.<\/p>\n
“It’s is difficult for us because we have to spend $18 million in one month and I hope it (payless pay day) would never happen,” he added.<\/p>\n
Around 75 percent of the annual appropriation package of the commonwealth is set aside to pay the salaries and benefits of government employees. Under the Fiscal 1999 spending limit of $216 million, $189 million have been earmarked for payroll alone.<\/p>\n
The continuous decline in cash collections since late last year is also making it difficult for the financially-troubled government to meet its obligations to vendors, according to Tenorio. “Sometimes we missed the payment to the vendors but we let them know that it will take a little time to pay them.”<\/p>\n
The present administration is still paying some of the unsettled bills of former governor Froilan C. Tenorio. Estimates showed that the ex-leader of the commonwealth left some $27 million in unpaid accounts covering professional services, purchase of various office equipment, plane tickets, among others.<\/p>\n
Because of the financial uncertainty confronting his administration, the incumbent governor plans to widen the existing austerity policy he has put in place to further cut down government spending.<\/p>\n
A four-point proposal to deal with the anticipated 13.4 percent decline in revenue collections for the current fiscal year has been presented to members of the Legislature for consideration.<\/p>\n
The cash-strapped government is hoping to save some $15 million in expenditures from the recommendations that include pay cuts and reduced working hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio said yesterday his administration is looking for ways to shore up sagging revenue collections in order to raise some $18 million for the salaries of close to 5,000 employees under government payroll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44742","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\/44742","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}