The Commonwealth Development Authority strongly objected yesterday to the proposed bill that aims to grant delinquent borrowers credit relief.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is condoning inefficiency, unfairness, and absolute neglect of one\u2019s financial responsibility. This bill is baseless and totally senseless,\u201d said CDA board member Tom Quitugua, chair of the board committee on development corporation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very saddened with the introduction of this piece of legislation. With all due respect to our lawmakers, that particular move is a slap in the face of people in the Commonwealth,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Quitugua noted that the Legislature seemed to be catering to a few \u201cinterest\u201d group lobbying for credit relief.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are all public servants. We all have a responsibility to all people not just to a few people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In all common sense, the board member, asked, \u201cWhat do we do with good borrowers? They only come to the aid of \u2018bad\u2019 borrowers.\u201d <\/p>\n
The House of Representatives passed Monday Senate Bill 14-48, which seeks credit relief for delinquent borrowers, such as reduction of interest rates and effective condonation in certain circumstances. <\/p>\n
While the bill recognized that the high rate of delinquency threatens the CDA’s loan programs, it also cited the unstable economic conditions that contributed to many borrowers’ inability to repay the loans.<\/p>\n
“[The] CDA must make accommodations to assist these borrowers who are currently facing difficult and uncertain times and ensure the repayment of the loans,” it states.<\/p>\n
The bill seeks to provide relief to delinquent borrowers who have loans administered by the CDA for at least five years.<\/p>\n
Quitugua called on the public to speak up on the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe appeal to the good sense of our lawmakers to reconsider this measure. We also encourage the people to come forward and be heard,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat are we telling the people? It\u2019s okay to borrow and not pay? This sends a very negative signal to the people,\u201d the CDA official said.<\/p>\n
Further, he said that the bill infringes on the authority of the Judicial Branch and on the autonomy of CDA. <\/p>\n
The bill seeks to prevent the CDA from filing foreclosure or default collection proceedings\u2014or any court proceeding\u2014on any delinquent loan without first meeting with the borrower and making “good faith attempt” to resolve the outstanding indebtedness.<\/p>\n
The CDA is pursuing collection from about 200 delinquent borrowers. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been very aggressive with our collection campaign and borrowers have been communicating with us. All of a sudden, the Legislature comes up with this idea which would result in total loss for the CDA, for the government,\u201d Quitugua said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Commonwealth Development Authority strongly objected yesterday to the proposed bill that aims to grant delinquent borrowers credit relief.<\/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-84009","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\/84009","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=84009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}