Consumer loans are up by 16 percent so far this year, while total savings in the CNMI are down by 10.3 percent.<\/p>\n
Statistics from banks compiled by the Department of Commerce showed that consumer loans in the third quarter of 2005 totaled $257.3 million.<\/p>\n
During the same period in 2004, consumer loans totaled $222 million.<\/p>\n
Data showed that during the first quarter of 2004, consumer loan was $68.7 million.<\/p>\n
It rose to $75.1 million by the second quarter of 2004 and further up to $78.3 million during the third quarter.<\/p>\n
It jumped to $82.7 million during the fourth quarter of 2004.<\/p>\n
The trend continued in 2005 with consumer loans increasing to $85.8 million in the first quarter of this year, and $87.9 million in the second quarter.<\/p>\n
In the third quarter, the loan was at $83.6 million.<\/p>\n
Meantime, total savings in the banks decreased by $70.6 million as of the third quarter this year compared to the same period last year.<\/p>\n
Data showed that savings as of the third quarter of this year totaled $612.9 million which is over 10 percent lesser than last year\u2019s $683.5 million.<\/p>\n
During the first quarter of 2004, total savings reached $224 million and this rose to $235 million in the third quarter of the year.<\/p>\n
This year, total savings during the first quarter reached $215 million, which lowered to $204 million in the second quarter, and further down to $193 million in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
Commerce economic development officer Glenn Manglona said the decrease in savings maybe due to increased prices of commodities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shows that people are not really saving because of the high prices. People are tapping their savings to buy fuel, food, and other basic commodities,\u201d said Manglona.<\/p>\n
Meantime, total loans in the banks showed a decline from $614.6 million during the first three quarters in 2004 to $605 million during the same period this year.<\/p>\n
Manglona said this indicates that banks remain \u201ccautious\u201d in approving loan applications.<\/p>\n
In the national level, financial experts have reported that more Americans are spending more than what they are earning, resulting in more debts and zero savings.<\/p>\n
This was acknowledged by Atalanta Sosnoff president Craig Steinberg in a presentation during a recent NMI Retirement Fund\u2019s money managers meeting at Aqua Resort Club.<\/p>\n
He said that compared with other countries, U.S. personal consumption rate is up at 71 percent.<\/p>\n
He said Europe\u2019s rate is at 58 percent, Japan is 55 percent, and China is 42 percent.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the U.S. went to negative savings recently, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of spending has been debt-inspired. People are incurring debts through loans, credit cards,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Consumer loans are up by 16 percent so far this year, while total savings in the CNMI are down by 10.3 percent.<\/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-95895","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\/95895","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=95895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}