DFS Saipan is to expand and invest as much as $20m in its operations on the Pacific island of Saipan, according to comments made by Governor Benigno Fitial in his State of the Commonwealth Address

last week [Fitial is the Governor of CNMI, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands).
In his address, Fitial highlighted the importance of DFS' presence on the island and also underlined how big a challenge the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (Saipan, Tinian and Rota) now faces following Japan Airlines' decision to withdraw its services.
So important was this service, that Fitial explained that the government had been forced to revise its fiscal year projections to take account of the loss of revenue from fewer Japanese tourists.But despite what he described as a worrying budget deficit inherited from his predecessor, Fitial remained cautiously optimistic: ‘As I said at my inauguration, one of our main priorities is to revive our Japanese tourism industry. Although Japanese tourist arrivals dropped 21% in February compared to the same month last year, we continue to be bullish on Japan, a growing economy.
‘It is encouraging that former Japanese Congressman Saburo Tsukamoto paid the CNMI a visit at my invitation and pledged to help bring back Japanese investments. And I'm very proud of securing additional Northwest flights during one of my visits to Japan.
‘We are working hard to secure more visitors from Japan. I have offered my own family land in Marpi to build a memorial in honour of Emperor Akihito's recent visit to the Commonwealth. We want to build a temple and another Japanese memorial in honour of World War II casualties.
‘But this is no ordinary State of the Commonwealth Address. Our government is in financial crisis. We didn't create this crisis. But we are going to fix it.’