Lack of common sense

It is widely known that the local tourism industry has crashed and crumbled in every corner, thus the closure of tourist related businesses this year of more than 1,100.

Then there are those in the wings seriously monitoring whether to close shop now or hang on until next year in hopes that with some public sector assistance, they outlast this deathly economic contagion.

What happens when the current economic crisis hits rock bottom? It means, the tourism industry contracts even further making it a suspect sector of the local economy. Any substantial recovery in this sector would take at least ten years to return to normalcy or until all 1,100 businesses reopen their doors.

For all the unjustified bashing leveled against it from without, the garment industry proves itself the sturdiest even amidst the devaluation of Asian currencies. But then it stands a chance of stumbling too if some of our brilliant policymakers have it their way–impose more strangling statutory mandates not that it is of absolute necessity that they do so, but because they’ve succumbed to federal pressure even with the knowledge that it’s the only industry that rakes in profits, therefore, supports the local economy with direct and indirect taxes.

There’s an obvious lack of common sense in this rather moronic approach to destroying an industry that now feeds thousands of families. Is it really that hard understanding and appreciating the contribution of the garment industry in these most difficult times? Is this the kind of attitude and message we wish to convey to investors? Is it justice to destroy an industry by alleged local political geniuses who are mindless of the fact that this is where thousands of families get their bread and butter?

What the local economy needs right now is resuscitation and expansion, not the usual reactionary policies of succumbing to federal pressure because one can’t articulate the dire financial straits of the NMI. Has our adversary, US Department of Interior, offered to help the NMI’s dedicated efforts on economic recovery? Or is it coming out here sometime in March of 1999 to talk economic plans in the midst of a serious amd deepening economic crisis?

Isn’t this a moronic approach preaching economic solutions in the middle of a crisis? Are they coming to tell us what we already know? And isn’t it a typical Interior approach which depicts some 37 years of grand failure to help island governments establish sound economic foundations? Is this why some of our policymakers have seen fit to parrot and emulate this grand approach to more failure? Perhaps Speaker Diego Benavente has an explanation for all his fallacious assessment of economic reality in the NMI today.