NOTHING could be known about the CNMI’s gross domestic product or gross national product because the data is not available. With such information vacuum, there will also be no aggregate tool to gauge the commonwealth’s economic performance.
However, the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs will help the CNMI develop GIP data similar to GNP which would be useful to the government and the business sector in making decisions related to the economy.
In a recent letter, acting OIA Director Nik Pula informed Rep. William S. Torres, R-Saipan and chairman of the House Committee on United States and Foreign Affairs, about their plan to work with the CNMI government in developing GIP data.
“The issue of developing (GIP) data is…a matter of concern to this office. We agree that GIP data is important. OIA would like to assist local governments in developing GIP data for all of the insular areas. We hope to develop a plan for doing so in coordination with the CNMI Department of Commerce,” said Pula in the letter.
OIA’s letter was a response to an earlier request made by Torres for the agency to assist CNMI on developing the data.
Torres also told Schorr that under the Covenant, the U.S. should help CNMI “in developing its economic base so as to achieve a progressively higher standard of living for its people as part of the American economic community and to develop the economic resources needed to meet the financial responsibilities of local self-government.”
In Aug. 2001, Bank of Hawaii released an economic report that stressed the need for the CNMI to develop GIP data.
The report stated that while the CNMI government recognized the absence of GIP data, “it has neither the resources nor the expertise to make the commitment it takes to secure macroeconomic accounting techniques to produce credible data and to keep them current.”
The bank said the CNMI needed “timely, accurate and detailed” data on its economy which would “especially be useful to overseas investors, bond-holding and rating agencies and other users including institutions and citizens.”
