The Office of Insular Affairs would support power privatization if the CNMI government decides to go in that direction.<\/p>\n
Asked on the issue yesterday, visiting OIA deputy assistant secretary David Cohen said that findings indicate that privatization can often result in more cost-effective services. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not for me to weigh in on those type of policy issues except to say that economic research shows that privatization can often result in services being delivered more cost-effectively and, if the government wants to pursue privatization, we will be supportive and do what we can to assist,\u201d said Cohen. <\/p>\n
Power privatization is one of the issues that Cohen and OIA economist Wali Osman discussed in a closed-door meeting with local officials, headed by Gov. Juan N. Babauta, House Speaker Benigno Fitial, Vice Speaker Timothy Villagomez, and other lawmakers on Saipan yesterday.<\/p>\n
Speaking in generalities, Cohen said they discussed about \u201cthe proper relationship of the government and the private sector\u201d or \u201chas government taken too large a role,\u201d and \u201cwhat things the government needs to do to give the private sector comfort.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not talking here of CNMI alone. It\u2019s a regional issue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
All these, he said, are aimed at making the territories become attractive sites for investments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe discussed how we can work together to improve the business climate. When businesses come here, we\u2019d make sure that we\u2019ve done everything to make a good impression. OIA\u2019s role is not to support a particular type of investment but to work with the local government to make them attractive to businesses in general,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cohen is on-island to follow up on issues in relation to the business conference organized by the Department of the Interior for the territories in Los Angeles. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re doing everything we can do to make sure that the enthusiasm of the conference is not squandered,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Office of Insular Affairs would support power privatization if the CNMI government decides to go in that direction.<\/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-85164","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\/85164","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=85164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}