Dismantling & Redesigning the TINA Policies

     Whatever little debate there was during the recent election, it centred mostly on the TINA (There Is No Alternative) policies; there was near unanimity against the neo-liberal and purely theoretical policies – the blind adherence to the Washington Consensus -- that were tried on the populace. The entire Mauritian political spectrum, including our Party Malin and popular sentiment unsettled by TINA policies (with the exception of the TINA stooges in the press that have over the last five years tried to build the TINAs and their friends as the most brilliant and super competent economists that ever walked on Mauritian soil) had expressed their discontent in various ways.

Competitiveness not an option anymore !!!

A proper assessment of our external competitiveness with respect to our major trading partners by examining a variety of indicators will shed some light over some of the present policy implications of dealing with an appreciating rupee. What is meant by the competitiveness of an economy?The concepts of competitiveness are the short-run versus long-run view of competitiveness and price versus non-price measures of competitiveness. The commonly used measures of competitiveness are multilateral or nominal effective exchange rate (NEER), real exchange rates and real effective exchange rate (REER). In the long run, competitiveness reflects the ability of an economy to improve living standards.

The Propertied Oligarchy: Their Veto Power

As no man is a prophet in his own land, the tapping of external sources may be more useful in driving our point that our local politics continue to be influenced by the moves of the old propertied oligarchy. (preferable to railing against the double standards of a partisan media.) The recent report of the BTI 2010 — Mauritius Country Report. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2009 shares our views that “ .... democratic institutions have not succeeded in breaking up the veto power of the old propertied white oligarchy or in bringing it under democratic control. Democracy, a cornerstone of Mauritian national identity, ends on the sugar cane plantation, at the bank and at the factory gate. Under the surface of ethnic and cultural pluralism, the economic dominance of the Franco-Mauritian upper class is still effective. "

New Issues and challenges

Le gratin of the public sector -always free for free lectures especially if there are from foreign experts - were all there in the front seats avidly imbibing those glimpses of insights on the need to reassess our strategies towards Asia which is gradually imposing itself as the “true engine of global growth”. The lecture of Professor Dan Quah of LSE did touch a chord.

Finance and Planning – Together or Apart?

Now that the need for a Planning Commission is being felt to achieve a proper cohesion in our vision, strategies and implementation capacities, the issue of the demerging of the planning division from MOFEE is again topical. With more reliance placed on government intervention than on markets, a new, specific and separate role for the planning Ministry/Commission,

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): more of a mess

In these very columns we had said it before that to give a semblance of correcting the private sector bias, a 2% tax was levied on the book profit of the corporate sector to be credited to a fund. We had said at that time that this policy, announced as a watershed in creating a CSR approach that is both voluntary and statutory with the prescribing requirements, is a mere ‘tick the box” approach ;

Titbits : A Question of Alliance!!!; The World Bank’s Doing Business Report; Worrying Trends ;Inflationary Pressures; A Question of Principles.

These days, it is not only our political class, but also the private sector, that seems to be less focused on issues that matter and more on the means needed to regain power or absolute power.