THE CNMI’s ailing economy will continue to languish until access to Chinese tourism is regained, U.S. Congressman Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan told U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg last week.
Kilili was following up on his Jan. 24, 2024, letter in support of the Commonwealth Ports Authority’s request to exempt the CNMI from DOT’s order to limit the number of round-trip flight services between the U.S. and China.
In his follow-up letter to Buttigieg on March 5, Kilili reiterated that scheduled flights from China to the CNMI should already be exempt from limitations. But he noted that the flight cap order issued by DOT in Aug. 2023 in response to China’s Covid-19 restrictions included scheduled flights to the CNMI and has not been lifted since.
Now that USDOT is regularly increasing capacity by adding more flights between the U.S. and China, Kilili said the exemption provided for in Annex VI of the U.S.-China Civil Air Transport Agreement should be reinstated.
“The Marianas remains in a deep state of recovery following the pandemic, which in combination with recent historic natural disasters, has crippled our infrastructure and economy. Members of my community remain concerned that our ailing economy will continue to languish and may not recover until access to Chinese tourism is regained,” Kilili said.
“This could only happen when direct scheduled flights from China fully resume, as allowed under the provisions of Annex VI,” he added.
In January 2024, the Hotel Association of the Northern Mariana Islands said its members’ average occupancy rate of 38% “is…critically low and unsustainable for hotels….”
HANMI said the falling room rate average is due to high dependence on only one source market — Korea — and the absence of large secondary source markets of visitors.
Prior to the pandemic, the China market was the CNMI tourism industry’s second largest.
Last month, the Department of Finance said the CNMI government’s total tax and fee collections for the first quarter of fiscal year 2024 fell short of projected revenue by $5.3 million or over 12%.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Ralph N. Yumul said if this trend in revenue collection continues, “we are looking at about $20 million shortfall for this fiscal year.”
