President Johnson Toribiong in an interview said he will be holding a public forum to inform the community on the reason why the Compact agreement has not been signed yet.
The president said that the two parties have yet to determine the allocation and funds and had to agree on structural details.
The president said the U.S. group wants the amendments to be in a separate agreement, while the Palau government wants it incorporated in the Compact agreement itself.
The president said Palau also refused to agree on the plan of the U.S. government to micromanage the operation of the government and the amount of taxes it should impose.
He said the U.S. government wants Palau to raise the fish export tax from $0.35 cents to $0.85 cents a kilo.
“They want us to raise the revenues, that is micromanagement,” Toribiong said.
Palau and U.S. has agreed to a $250 million Compact funding package.
The $250 million package includes subsidy for the U.S. Postal Service, the funding provided to Palau in the Fiscal Year 2010 and resources earmarked for annual contributions to the infrastructure as maintenance matching fund.
The allocation of the funds for these programs has not been worked out, thus delaying the formal signing of the agreement.
Both the U.S. and Palau conducted a year-long review of the Compact and Palau will have another opportunity to review the Compact after year 2024.
The government is confident that at the time the Compact funds will have performed well enough to sustain Palau’s economy.
Earlier the president announced that the signing of the agreement is scheduled on April 26 and Palauan officials are hoping that the event will be transpiring here. However that signing has been pushed to an unknown date due to the minor differences between the two parties.
The president however said that U.S. President Barack Obama has included in his proposed 2011 budget a funding of over $20 million to cover the aid for Palau for next year, pending Congress’s approval of the entire financial aid.
A U.S. Congress committee hearing is yet to be conducted to tackle the funding package for Palau.
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