Are Opinion Leaders Failing Us?

In a bid to contain mass deception, David Sirota, the author of “Hostile Takeover” and “The Uprising” warns:

"When hostility to intelligence and to the basic process of thinking itself emanates from the very professional thinkers who lead the nation’s intelligentsia, it’s a sign our country is becoming the ignorance-deifying idiocracy we should all fear."

Why The Debt-to-GDP Ratio Has Fallen

For sure it didn't happen by reducing wastage levels. Nope. That we know from reading the damning government audit report year after year. Instead, the Finance Minister did it mostly by never spending many of the billions he had budgeted over the last 4.5 years in typical bean-counting tradition:

1. The Empowerment fund has spent only Rs800 million over a 3-year period instead of the 1-billion-rupees-a-year pledge. That's Rs2.2 billion 'saved'.

2. By making us pay Rs3 billion for an apparent hedging mess at the STC through much higher pump prices than would warrant prevailing oil market prices.

3. Announcing 6 Rs1-billion funds in the June 2008 budget (Food security fund, Human Resource, Knowledge and Arts fund, MID fund, etc) but spending only a small fraction of them.

4. Not spending enough of the last 4-5 capital budgets.

5. Repackaging paragraph 271 as an additional stimulus package and setting aside a few more billions which were never to be spent.

6. VAT of 15% was kept on oil prices throughout the period they went all the way to USD147 a barrel. For instance VAT receipts on oil prices doubled from Rs1.65 billion to Rs3.3 billion in 12 short months from 2006 to 2007.

7. Depreciating our currency.

Rezistans ek Alternativ 2-0 Government of Mauritius

At last, some good news in the land of ti-lipie lor gro-lipie. The submission of Rezistans ek Alternativ that categorising candidates into four and rather arbitrary ethnic groups may not even have an elementary legal grounding has now been declared admissible by the UN's Human Rights Committee. That's after Justice Balancy ruled in favour of the political organisation some four years ago.

Although our Government has now six months to submit its position to the Committee and drag its feet a little longer, the right thing for our parliament to do would be to immediately chip that obsolete section off our constitution.

Poll Blames Minister For Brutal Drop in Savings

As a snapshot of the results shows, some 88% of the voters thought the Minister of Finance was mostly responsible for the large and alarming drop in the savings rate to a 30-year low of 12%. 3% placed the blame on the Governor's shoulders while 7% had none of them responsible.

True the sample is quite tiny at 26 votes. Still, that's only 4 less than Pluriconseil's 30. Besides Pravind Jugnauth lost his seat by a mere 38 votes in 2005.

My First Impression On the 2010 Budget

Just like last June I didn't listen to the budget speech live. I don't think I will until they have it subtitled in English. I haven't read it either. I've only scrolled down the document for about one minute last night. Which is why I had to turn down a few requests for opinion pieces since Wednesday.

But I've already seen the same truckloads of lies and misleading statements in there. It seems to be a copy paste of the same crap that we have been served for the past 4.5 years.

Mauritius, don't you think we deserve way better than this?

Meet The Misery Index

It's already tough when you're facing high inflation. Now just imagine that you're without a job as well. It becomes hellish and it's the reason why Arthur Okun suggested back in the 70's that we add the two together to come up with his Misery Index. And why inflation targets have become so popular since 1989.

Computing it for Mauritius yields interesting insights. It hit a 10-year high of 20.5% at the end of 2007 and stayed almost put at 20% a year later. That's close to double the level when Ramgoolam lost power in 2000. Federation 2 had also a much lower average than the supply-side folly of Sithanen: 13.3% vs 19.4%. That is Sithanen's new model produced 46% more misery.

Making Sense of Sithanese

How serious is the Minister about eradicating poverty?

Simply check the cumulative rate of inflation -- the worst enemy of the poor -- as well as for the presence of explicit inflation targets. Federation 2 took 4.75 years to clobber the population with the high rate of cumulative inflation of 23.90%. Sithanen was in a hurry. He took only 2.89 years. And he has systematically violated article 5.2a of the Bank of Mauritius Act by not providing any inflation targets.

Minister's central objective was to set the stage for robust growth.

That didn't happen. His average will be around 4.3% by the time we go to vote next year. That will be the worst performance in decades. The numbers don't change that much if we exclude the last 12 months.

He's gonna brag that his reforms have brought in Rs34 billions of FDI.

Whilst it's true that we've received a lot more FDI, these big inflows have not benefited a majority of the population because they've been mismanaged. Just ask or look around. Better still, check the national savings rate. It's currently hovering at a 30-year low of 12%. Besides, did you know that the average growth rate of Sithanen his first time around (September 1991 to December 1995) was 1.0% higher at 5.3% although he got only Rs1 billion of FDI over 4.25 years?

Thanks to the Sithanen reforms, Mauritius is now the 17th best place to do business.

The Doing Business rankings measures red tape and nothing else. Even the World Bank doesn't trust it, so why should we? Furthermore, did you know that Mauritius clocked a 23rd spot in the 2005 rankings -- before the reforms had actually begun -- but 9 spots lower at 32nd in the year of the early harvest and six spots lower at 29th in the year of the bumper crop? And if we gained a few spots this year it's mostly because we've made firing workers easier and gamed the index by passing a rank-raising law. Expect wild swings in our rankings in the years ahead.

Sithanen Delivers Worst Growth in Decades

Although the delivery of robust growth was his main objective. Guess, it's one reason for voters in Belle-Rose/Quatre-Bornes not to send him to parliament again.

It's Not Getting Better, Is It?

MK reports that one yield statistic has reached a record level. Is that an indication of better management already? Not really.

See, they lent out one of their planes recently -- for which they self-congratulated themselves -- so that they are offering less seats to and from the land of c'est un plaisir. That should lower the number of empty seats aboard each time one of their planes takes off, right?

Well, it also depends on how traffic is doing. Although traffic fell over the past little while, it hasn't fallen enough so as to depress yields as much as renting that plane has increased it.

1.4% Decline in Savings Was Termed Bleak

In his Insider's View published back in August 2005 the Finance Minister lamented that our national savings rate had dropped from an average of 26.0% in the first Navin Ramgoolam government to 24.6% under Federation 2. He goes on to say (see paragraph 17):

CSO is forecasting a very low savings rate of 19.5 per cent for 2005. Here again, we must be utterly concerned. Firstly, because as a nation we are consuming at a faster rate than we are producing. Secondly, because the savings rate is below the investment rate. This will exert demand pressures on prices and will have an adverse impact on the current account of the balance of payments.

Fast forward 4.25 years and the savings rate is now at a 30-year low of 12%. I haven't heard him on that yet but I wouldn't be surprised he's so shattered that he can't find the right words to express his anguish. But I also wonder how all this happened. Any clues?