No BEA GDP statistics for the NMI for months

The statistical report from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis on Guam’s gross domestic product for 2022 was released April 15.

The latest report on the BEA website for the Northern Mariana Islands is for 2020, released in January last year.

CNMI 2020 GDP from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis

“Real gross domestic product for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands decreased 29.7% in 2020 after decreasing 11.3% in 2019. The decrease in real GDP reflected decreases in exports of goods and services, private fixed investment, personal consumption expenditures, and government spending. Imports, a subtraction item in the calculation of GDP, also decreased,” BEA said at the time.

Dail Thomas, public information officer for stakeholders and customers, congressional affairs at BEA; told the Journal, “We are expecting to release Gross Domestic Product for CNMI, 2021 and 2022, along with GDP by Industry for CNMI, 2020 and 2021, in the fall of 2024.”

The BEA is “solely a statistical agency,” he said in an email to the Journal. The bureau’s reports for the U.S. mainland economy for 2023 were released in January.

Reports for Guam and the NMI are among those funded by the Office of Insular Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior. mbj

Sinlaku exposes fragile NMI supply chains already strained before super typhoon

Even before Super Typhoon Sinlaku battered the Northern Mariana Islands and disrupted fragile supply chains, businesses across the islands were already struggling with rising costs of doing business, especially with surging fuel and utility charges, worker shortages, and the general difficulty of obtaining imported products, not to mention shipping delays due to competition with the enormous tonnage of disaster aid coming to the islands.

No BEA GDP statistics for the NMI for months