The current military buildup in the Marianas creates huge business opportunities and provides access to a massive market for our local entrepreneurs. We have the needed local resources as well as a tremendous advantage by way of our location. This chance to improve our collective lot, however, cannot be realized unless we get our act together and prepare to participate.
In this spirit, I call upon our local leaders to direct and coordinate local grassroots solutions to solve our economic problems. I recommend for the Rota Municipality, Tinian and Aguiguan Municipality, and the Saipan and Northern Islands Municipality to hold their own separate and respective Grassroots Economic Conference.
Tinian has already started the process and Saipan, Rota, and the Northern Islands should follow suit. These gatherings must involve the local farmers, fishermen, students and instructors, and local merchants, as well as members of the local Chambers and Hotel Associations. The central government must then provide their logistical support to the participants before, during, and after each of the conferences. These agencies should include, at a minimum, the Northern Marianas College, Commonwealth Development Authority, Department of Public Lands, Commonwealth Utilities Corporation, Department of Lands & Natural Resources, Department of Commerce, and Department of Finance. Additional support should be provided by regulatory agencies including CRM, DEQ, HPO, and Zoning. The CNMI should then request the U.S. Department of the Interior and other local and federal resources to provide Technical Assistance Grants to hold the conferences and to prepare the final report and recommendations. The results of these three (3) separate conferences should then be compiled and submitted to the central government for the development of the CNMI’s Economic Development Strategy. Then this comprehensive and unified Strategy must be implemented with the greatest support from all parties.
The purposes of the CNMI Grassroots Economic Conference should be to:
(1) Assess, evaluate, and recommend specific industries and business ventures or activities from each Municipality necessary to revitalize, rejuvenate, and diversify the CNMI’s local economy;
(2) Identify market access for local goods, services, and commodities (including understanding current procedures and protocols necessary to access military and other federal procurement contracts);
(3) Increase private sector employment opportunities; and,
(4) Improve the local community standard of living.
The conferences should identify major potential industries from each Municipality based on experience (i.e. agriculture, fisheries, construction, service, etc) and available resources and then determine how best we can implement and expand upon these specific industries with the full support of the public and private sectors. We all know that Rota has great potential to export root crops (taro, yams, etc) and has the best and purest spring water in our part of the world. Tinian has excellent melons and beef. Saipan has proven it can successfully cultivate a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. The Northern Islands are excellent resource for citrus, commercial fisheries and volcanic mineral mining. These municipalities together can organize into one major “CNMI Market Place” providing the listed crops and commodities to Guam and the region.
In addition, it needs to be recognized that Tinian and Rota already have Casino industries. We need to support and promote this industry on these two islands and consider them “CNMI Casinos”. We may also need to renegotiate how the revenues are shared.
Furthermore, because of the limited land size on Guam, the CNMI has a great potential to host major construction projects for the military particularly in fabrication and pre-fabrication work for projects on Guam.
The CNMI should reexamine how to modify its Free Trade Zone laws to provide tax incentives for the prime contractors working on the military buildup projects.
As noted, the CNMI should act as one market and not compete within itself. In reference to Agriculture, CNMI government agencies should provide specific assistance to include:
(1) DPL to identify all available public land on each municipality that could be used for commercial agriculture and then make these land available as a priority to the farmers;
(2) NMC CREES, DLNR Division of Agriculture & Soil & Water Conservation Districts, DEQ, USDA NRCS and others to identify specific variety of crops to be propagated based on experience, pest control measures, labor availability, irrigation systems, packaging, value-added processing, sales and marketing, export issues, conservation practices, and related matters;
(3) CDA, Department of Commerce, and the DOI to assist in the financial planning and funding aspects of farming;
(4) CUC to assist in identifying and providing access to affordable water for irrigation purposes and electricity for value-added processing; and other related assistance; and,
(5) These can then be replicated for the other industries.
It is true that there are many internal and external factors affecting our current struggling economic conditions.
But it is also true that we have the basic tools as well as the opportunity and valuable resources to help us ride out this economic trauma. We must act now or we risk being considered part of the region’s economic problem rather than an essential part of the solution.
Our great CNMI is faced with unprecedented challenges that negatively affect every facet of our lives.
Furthermore, our dwindling economy cannot sustain the current costs of operating our government unless we take immediate and realistic measures to revitalize, diversify, and rejuvenate our economic base.
We cannot continue to let outside consultants and so called “experts tell us what they think we need or how they think we should do it. We have sufficient and competent local expertise, local resources, local experience, and local solutions to help ourselves. All we need to learn is how best to work in harmony and not to neutralize our effectiveness by competing with ourselves. Once we developed our CNMI’s Economic Development Strategy, we must then follow through with their expeditious implementation.
We cannot succeed as a society if we continue to ignore our local people and our local resources. We must give ourselves the opportunity to participate in the development of our economic revitalization strategy. Too much is at stake to allow politics or other outside influence to dictate our economic path. We have great economic opportunities available to us but we must unite as one CNMI and act now!
EDWARD C. DELEON
GUERRERO
Koblerville, Saipan
