Saipan Economy

Saipan's Economy

Ever since saipan's government came into existence, the economy has been going down hill ever since. Except for the years before 1994, the economy was doing pretty well and they did not have a deficit. After 1994, the Saipan has been owing more money every year and in 2011 they owed about 350 million dollars. There have been a number of stupid governers of Saipan. I remember hearing that one of them bailed out a lady that was in jail for sex trade to be his personal massager. The other day junior and senior students from three different schools met together and sat in a place where this man named Tony Babauta spoke to us about the saipan economy in terms of finance and budget. It took me a while to understand what he was saying but i later got it. In 2009 the variance was about 6 million dollars. In 2010 the variance was about 2 million dollars. In 2011 saipan earned 6 million dollars. So if the government can keep earning 6 million dollars every year then they'll be able to pay back everything in probably 45 years. That is actually too long of a recovery, they need to take more drastic measures and change the elected officials to people that actually care about the economy and not for personal things. The Saipan government pays more to their elected officials than the United States. One of the spokesman showed us a pie chart on the money that is being used on different departments they use about 45% of that money for education which i think is good. There were also a lot of other departments that were shown and the spokesman suggested that the government should take some points off of some and put them under others that may need more money.

Because of all of this financial crisis, our hospital and power supplier are on the brink of bankruptcy. The hospital here is limiting the use of air conditioning making it hot inside which is a very bad thing because hospitals need to be cold in order to keep germs away and since it is hot it is very unhealthy for the patience that are in the hospital. There is also a shortage of nurses and doctors because they either left the island or were laid off. As for the CUC, our power supplier, they get grants to by oil but the government is I think splitting the grants for the hospital so they could pay off their bills. So CUC wont have the money to buy oil to generate power for Saipan which causes tourism to just plunder down in numbers.

I think that the government should invest money on newable energy. The investment will cost a lot of money but in the long run it'll save a lot. Wind and solar energy should be in consideration because Saipan has a lot of sunlight and has a fair amount of wind.