Acting Commerce Secretary Sixto Igisomar said this year his department’s Central Statistics Division, which is tasked to come up on a quarterly basis with Saipan’s consumer price index, or CPI, will further improve its data-gathering function.
“There are a lot of plans for the department this year. We’re improving our data collection. We want to get as much data as possible,” Igisomar said in an interview.
For the first time, the statistics division will also release CPIs for Rota and Tinian in hopes of convincing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to increase the food stamp benefits provided to their residents.
The prices on both islands are relatively higher than Saipan’s due to higher freight costs in shipping goods.
“We want to make sure that there won’t be a challenge when we release our first CPI for Rota and Tinian in the summer of 2011,” said Igisomar.
From a high of over $260 million in 1997, the CNMI government budget now amounts to $132 million. It admitted recently that it could end up collecting less than the amount.
The sharp decline in revenue has meant the closure of “non-essential” public offices every other Friday and the imposition of other cost-cutting measures.
“The CNMI is going through some serious austerity measures and reduction in services. A lot of things that we’re doing here not just involve Commerce but other agencies as well. Data collection is very important for the CNMI not just when asking for federal funding opportunities but also to give us an economic analysis of where we are at right now,” Igisomar said.
