Commonwealth Ports Authority Board Chair Jose C. Ayuyu, center, speaks during a meeting on Friday last week. Also in the photo are board Vice Chair Antonio Cabrera, Executive Director Leo Tudela, board members Dolores Kiyoshi, Thomas Villagomez and Ramon Tebuteb.
COMMONWEALTH Ports Authority Board Chair Jose C. Ayuyu has asked CPA management to collect $6 million in receivables from delinquent airport facility users.
At a board meeting Friday, Ayuyu said it is also a good idea to always provide the board’s financial affairs committee with a copy of the delinquency report so the committee can monitor how much exactly CPA generates every month from all sources of income.
As for the “very delinquent” airport facility users, he said “it is important that we write small ‘love letters’ to those guys to get their cooperation to pay because they can’t be using CPA facilities without paying.”
“If they are in a [bad] situation financially, we want to encourage them to come in and talk to us. Because, you know, again, our business is not to drive them out of business. If it is [the] necessary kind of business that helps the airport, then we need to work out something,” Ayuyu said.
But, he added, “we still need to be on top of them because that’s the money that’s not available to CPA, and we really need that money.”
He asked CPA Enforcement/Lease Compliance Officer JoyAnn Tenorio to work with the board’s financial affairs committee chair, Dolores Kiyoshi, so they can be “on top of that.”
Ayuyu also informed his fellow board members that the outstanding receivables amount to $6 million, “and that’s a lot of money, so we’ve got to make any attempt to collect that money.”
In addition, he said, “we need to be creative to generate more revenues.”
Acting Comptroller Zack A. Diaz reported that the Port of Saipan has earned about $4.2 million while incurring about $1.7 million in operating expenses. The Rota seaport earned about $32,000 while the Tinian seaport collected about $211,000.
As for the airports, Diaz said they are “always experiencing operating losses.” So far this year, he said, the Francisco C. Ada/Saipan International Airport has already incurred $325,000 in losses while the losses incurred by the Benjamin Taisacan Manglona/Rota International Airport amount to $442,000.
Diaz said the Francisco Manglona Borja/Tinian International Airport, Diaz is the only one that has collected revenue, which totaled $35,000.
Diaz said the biggest expenses of CNMI airports are for personnel, utilities and travel.
