Creative Accounting and the Special Funds

Budget 2011 also meets the commitment to remove some of the opacities about the Special Funds and integrate all these funds that were proliferating all over the place into the budget for better expenditure coordination, accountability and transparency.

Why the Economic Restructuring and Competitiveness Programme (ERCP) ?

Despite attempts to cleverly pepper the ERCP with the jargon of the earlier Stimulus Packages, it still does demarcate itself from those earlier Packages in that it anchors the growth dynamics in more solid stuff in both the short- as well as medium-to-long-term, and the restructuring strategies and productivity enhancement measures easily fall in line. The Stimulus Package had been criticized for not showing any clear intention to resolve the current structural imbalance in the economy, which is so dependent on the Euro market and selective capital inflows.

Titbits : Another WB report, Reforms & Audit report

Another WB report: Investing Across Borders 2010

‘Investing Across Borders 2010’, another report by the World Bank Group that warns us on overly restrictive and obsolete laws which can be an impediment to foreign direct investment by creating additional costs to investment. Again our scores are excellent. Of the 33 sectors covered by the ‘Investing Across Sectors’ indicators, 32 are fully open to foreign capital participation in Mauritius.

Titbits : Cost of credit, Public debt and PBB

Cost of credit

     There seems to be a sudden awakening on the question of the cost of credit, may be because of the comments in the WB report – Investment Climate Assessment Mauritius 2009 -- that “the cost of borrowing in Mauritius, as measured by average interest rates, is high by comparative country standards.

Fragile Times – The Monetary Policy Stance

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of Mauritius unanimously decided to leave the key Repo Rate unchanged at 5.75 per cent per annum at its meeting of the 22nd June. Caught between rising inflationary expectations and excess liquidity accompanied by the prospect of slackening growth, the MPC thought it preferable to stay on the sideline for the moment quite unsure about inflation and growth outlook.

A More Proactive Competitive Strategy for SMEs

According to the Central Statistical Office (CSO), which conducts a census of small establishments employing less than 10 persons every five years, the contribution of the small units to value added is only 20% in 2007 compared to 18% in 2002. The structure of the Small and Medium Enterprises’ contribution to the economy has remained more or less the same.

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.