Sablan said except for Triple J’s Sandy Beach Homes Project, there are no other major construction projects in the CNMI going on.
He said some residents who applied for building permits to conduct minor construction in their houses are only able to do so through the federal assistance program of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.
“As far as new major construction, there’s only one that we’re working on and that is the Triple J project. Basically the residential application for building permits are coming in through the HUD program,” the DPW secretary told the Variety in an interview yesterday.
He said the sharply reduced number of building permits DPW issued reflects the sign of the times.
“Whenever we slow down on construction work, it’s really an identifier that our economy is not working yet,” he said.
Statistics from the CNMI Department of Commerce showed that 41 building permits were issued on the second quarter of 2010 — 26 were for commercial and 14 for residential.
The total value of the construction projects was $3.19 million.
Compared to the second quarter of 2008 when 57 building permits were issued, the Q2 2010 value was just almost a quarter of the construction then valued at $12.3 million.
Sablan said people are holding on to their savings because of the volatile economic condition.
He expressed hope that despite the many challenges the CNMI faces, investors will still consider pouring in fresh capital to the islands in the years to come.
With the demise of the Saipan garment manufacturing industry in 2009, tourism became the sole backbone of the islands’ economy.
