Legislators will seriously consider a list of recommendations to be adopted from the recently held economic conference to pass legislation aimed at helping the local economy recover from its worst crisis in years.<\/p>\n
The recommendations are expected to come out in May after experts and firms hired for the conference have completed their report on the several discussions conducted during the two-day meeting this month.<\/p>\n
House Speaker Diego T. Benavente said the legislature has agreed to act on the report to set in motion various proposals offered by business leaders and other economic experts.<\/p>\n
One measure the lawmakers expect to consider is the scrapping of the $100,000 security deposit imposed on foreign investments, a requirement that has come under fire due to its deterrent effect in luring businesses into the CNMI.<\/p>\n
Although the House has passed a bill easing the requirement, the Senate has yet to act on it and senators they are still in the process of amending the proposal.<\/p>\n
“Certainly legislation such as those are going to be necessary in order to push and promote development,” Benavente said in an earlier interview.<\/p>\n
House Ways and Means Committee chair Rep. Karl T. Reyes underscored the need to make the recommendations a topmost priority of the administration in efforts to spur the sluggish economy.<\/p>\n
He maintained the list may include proposals ranging from tax cuts and other business incentives to a proposed free trade zone and a package of legislation to amend existing laws found unfavorable to the growth of the investment climate in the CNMI.<\/p>\n
“It’s up to us how we interpret the recommendations,” Reyes explained. “We could make some attractive policies but we have to weigh everything when we make those policies.”<\/p>\n
He also said the findings would be beneficial to the government since a lot of the discussions involved the current market conditions in Asia, the island’s main source of tourism revenues and foreign investments.<\/p>\n
The Northern Marianas is reeling from its worst crisis in half a century spawned by the prolonged recession in Asia, prompting CNMI leaders to seek ways to alleviate the worsening situation, including the formation of the Economic Recovery and Revitalization Task Force.<\/p>\n
“The best thing we can do is to try to address the situation and try to have the least effect of the crisis (on our economy),” Reyes pointed out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Legislators will seriously consider a list of recommendations to be adopted from the recently held economic conference to pass legislation aimed at helping the local economy recover from its worst crisis in years.<\/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-46046","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\/46046","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=46046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}