A MAJOR player in the rental and real estate market on Saipan is opposing the passage of House Local Bill 13-25 which seeks to increase by 1.3 percent the current 3.7 percent user fee paid by the garment industry.
In a May 31 letter to House Speaker Heinz S. Hofschneider, R-Saipan and the bill’s author, Marianas Management Corp., a sister company of Joeten Enterprises, Inc., said “such a large increase in the user fee will immediately increase the cost of doing business for the garment manufacturers.”
MMC President Clarence T. Tenorio told Hofschneider that many large garment manufacturers will remain in business even after global tariffs and Headnote 3(a) expire at the end of 2004.
Thus, he said, the CNMI government “should not do anything that would hurt garment manufacturers during these trying economic times.”
