"Redonner l'espoir aux jeunes"

A must read , in Le Mauricien of 28th May, the interview of Stefan Gua of ReA

Some Extracts:

"...Mais se réunir ne suffit pas. Il faut apporter des changements en profondeur. Si nous ne faisons rien pour les changer, un autre parti au pouvoir pourra utiliser ces mêmes failles ou faire pire que le MSM. C’est pour cela que nous avons invité à une convergence. Toutefois, nous ne sommes dans aucune alliance pour l’heure.

The forthcoming budget: Little margin for “laddoos”!

We are of the opinion that Pada’s last budget will not be a "la bous dou” budget. There will be few hidden surprises emerging from his vault. The electoral promises or the welfarist measures may come after the budget without the need to provide the costing and funding of the measures -mostly scorched earth policies.

The 20 measures- well worth supporting -without illusions !

Most of the 20 measures proposed are quite laudable and seemed to have been well received by the public; nothing wrong with most of these measures ! We could even extend these measures to include, à la Macron-to shore up support among female voters -a pledge to fight toxic masculinity and force absent fathers to see their children. (Macron’s measures include the attempt to halt a slump in the birth rate, including a three-month leave for which mothers and fathers will receive welfare payments of €1,900 a month. This is on top of the standard 16 weeks of maternity leave and 25 days of paternity leave. A fertility check-up for all 20-year-olds and improved facilities for women to have their eggs frozen besides the setting up a parliamentary committee on menopause….)

Free public transport- a valid proposal indeed but….. !

Our bloggers/economists have been providing convincing arguments in favour of the free transport measure. There is no doubt that fare levels affect many people's finances directly. There is a general attitude that public transport should be free or "cheap", because of social, environmental and efficiency reasons. As they have pointed out, indeed, the key impacts and effects are mostly passenger growth, mode shift and environmental benefits.

Competitive Welfarism or a new economic model ?

This regime has been implementing some of its populist measures and more to come in the forthcoming budget…we have seen its impact…

Verdissement de l’economie ou bétonnage ?

(Published in L'express on 16 May 2024)

In big characters in yesterday’s issue of L’express, mention is made about the OECD Secretary-General congratulating our Minister of Finance, Mr Payadachy, on its strategy of the greening of our economy .

And , surprisingly, a few days back his investment promoter, the CEO of EDB ( we do recall their painful efforts at attracting such investors as Sobrino…) has ,out of the blue, wakened up to the realities of climate change .

GDP - Fake Data, a more simplified version :

Recently some top economists have drawn our attention to the likely tampering of GDP data by Statistics Mauritius (SM), namely by its reclassification of part of the foreign income of Global Business Companies (GBCs) from National to Domestic Income. This involves a transfer between two items of the balance of payments (bop), namely from primary income to services.

Competitive Welfarism : is it for the better or for the worse?

(Published in L'express of the 14th May 2024)

Don’t you get the impression that we seem to be in a bit of a heyday for “welfarism” populists, of such populist demagoguery rooted perhaps in economic disappointment, policy failures, and disruptive social changes This has lowered the legitimacy of the serious political parties and politicians( the ecologists, the left , the more technical ones...) and raised that of populist demagogues. This is impacting on the nature our politics and rendering our economy more fragile in the long term .