SENATOR Corina Magofna has been reaching out to stakeholders and experts to identify potential business ideas and other investment opportunities for the CNMI. Instead of just wringing their hands over the calamitous state of the local economy, other CNMI lawmakers and officials should join her in these efforts. And while they’re at it, they should also try to find out what ever happened to previous business and investment proposals involving aquaculture, breadfruit and other “promising ventures.”
“Over the last 35 years,” according to an old letter to the Variety editor, “we’ve seen economists from several of Washington’s consulting firms come all the way out here to do feasibility studies on how to spur economic development. To date, about $3.1 million worth of feasibility studies have been completed…none of which has been implemented…. Feasibility studies, to say the least, have done nothing else but to keep our hopes high that something would be done to boost our ailing economy. Nothing was ever implemented other than to hear every now and then that a task force from Washington will be coming out here to take another assessment of the economic and social needs of the islands. In fact, as recently as a month or so ago, a task force from Washington was here…. That group is still writing its findings.”
The letter came out in the summer…of 1979.
In the same year, Variety published an excellent article by the always insightful Micronesian scholar Francis X. Hezel, SJ regarding the economy of the U.S.-administered Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, which consisted of the NMI, Palau, the Marshall Islands and what is now known as the Federated States of Micronesia.
According to Hezel, back in the 1960s, TT residents “used to speak with real fervor about the need for self-reliance…. I remember high school debaters and would-be journalists holding forth on whether self-reliance would be best achieved by planting rice and bananas or farming the sea…. Today…the four political entities in the Trust Territory are further away from self-reliance than ever. Indeed, one of these entities — the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas — has abandoned the pursuit altogether.”
That was in 1979 when the CNMI was heavily dependent on the U.S. government, which was still funding most of the Commonwealth government’s annual budget. Sadly, a return to abject dependence on the feds seems to be the goal of the current CNMI administration. Today, the CNMI can be compared to the other TT districts in the late 1970s, “bargaining at the conference table with military and denial rights to their territories and…gambling on the willingness of the U.S. to pay enough for these rights to allow [the islands] to maintain their present [big] governmental apparatus,” Hezel wrote. “The island[s]…of Micronesia have pinned their hopes on their own negotiating skills and on America’s sense of moral obligation (or shame) rather than on the utilization of their own scant resources. And what of the dreams of rice fields, pepper plantations, a fishing industry and the other economic development ventures that were conjured up by the romantics of the 60s? They are all very nice and everyone would be happy to see some of these fine projects materialize, but no one is putting his money on it happening. [The islands’] meal ticket [are their] rights, not [their] resources….”
Nonetheless, Hezel said the new island governments would go on promoting (U.S.-funded) economic development. “There will be new attempts to build up commercial agriculture, fishing, tourism and light industries with the money allocated for this purpose,” he said. “Some planners foresee the day when $10 or $15 million annually may be found to capitalize such projects. It’s only a matter of sufficient time and money before the requisite business skills are mastered, an entrepreneurial class surfaces and the economy takes off, some of the hardier optimists maintain.”
“What they forget, however,” Hezel added, “is that genuine economic development depends on motivation just as much as on money. People — especially those who dwell in a ‘tropical paradise’ — must have a very good reason for breaking their backs in a factory or field five days a week. A personal income, even a substantial one, is not a strong enough motive to induce the majority of people to take up this kind of work, as commercial farming experiments in past years have repeatedly shown us. Most [islanders] can live reasonably comfortable lives — either off the land or off a kinfolk’s government salary — without recourse to this demanding work. For that matter, the governments, too, will be able to do nicely without their people’s productive efforts; they will have no reason to pressure them into taking on work that is not to their liking. A certain number of [island residents] will enter the service industries, of course, even as they do now. Restaurants, retail stores and bars will continue to be the most attractive commercial outlets for talented entrepreneurs as long as there are numerous government salaries to be spent. But productive industries will be generally ignored; those few that are begun will languish and die after a short time. One does not create a service economy, especially one fueled by a large government payroll, and then expect to turn it around into a productive economy by mere fiat or more dollars. This will not happen — at least if Guam can be used as a reliable gauge. There is no reason for it to happen!”
Hezel was spot on.
For the former TT islands, Hezel said “self-reliance…will mean reliance by [island residents] upon their own abilities to negotiate what sums of money they need [from the U.S.] in return for whatever marketable rights they are willing to surrender.”
Or, to quote the current CNMI governor, “pivot.”
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