Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio has reasons to have restless nights. With revenue collections continue to slip, the fear of failing to meet government payroll is enough to give him sleepless nights.<\/p>\n
Before signing a proclamation at his office last week, the governor admitted to married couples present during the rites that the deepening financial woes are a great source of worry for him than any of the problems confronting his administration.<\/p>\n
Every pay period, the financially-troubled administration has to raise $5 million to $6 million to pay the salaries of more than 4,000 employees under government payroll.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes I have restless nights. I couldn’t sleep, thinking whether we are going to meet the payday,” Tenorio said, as he explained to couples how tight the financial situation of the commonwealth is because of the economic slump.<\/p>\n
The prolonged financial turmoil in Asia, where Saipan counts a haul of its tourists and fresh capital, has put the commonwealth in economic distress since 1997, pulling down revenues and forcing a big number of establishments out of business.<\/p>\n
Latest revenue collections, according to officials, dropped during the first quarter of Fiscal 1999, but the governor’s financial advisor, Michael S. Sablan, said the decline was within 5 percent to 6 percent of the projections.<\/p>\n
Excise taxes from perfume, cosmetics and leather goods \u2013 the favorite gift items purchased by tourists \u2013 decreased during the quarter due to a downtrend in tourism industry and changing buying habits of the once high-spending Japanese visitors.<\/p>\n
Taxes generated from perfume sales plunged 39 percent from $91,000 to $56,000, while cosmetics dropped to $95,000 from $145,000, or 35 percent decline. Revenues from retail sales of leather goods slightly slid to $153,000 from $155,00 during the period.<\/p>\n
“This is a reflection of a downturn in tourism this year versus last year…It is not only our tourist numbers declining but tourist spending per person is less,” Sablan said in a phone interview. “These are very consistent with our projections.”<\/p>\n
Hotel occupancy tax took a $1 million dive from $2.2, or a 46 percent drop, compared to the same period last year.<\/p>\n
Excise taxes from cigarettes are 44 percent below last year’s first quarter, according to Sablan, as a direct result of the last cigarette purchase of stores and not as an offshoot of the cigarette price increase implemented late last year after the multi-million tobacco settlement deal.<\/p>\n
The administration has anticipated revenues to go south, adjusting 13.4 percent downward the current fiscal year’s spending level to $210 million.<\/p>\n
A deep cost-cutting steps have been put in place to help the government meet its operations and avert possible disruption in providing critical services to the community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio has reasons to have restless nights. With revenue collections continue to slip, the fear of failing to meet government payroll is enough to give him sleepless nights.<\/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-45414","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\/45414","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=45414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}