Although it is technically into a recession because its GDP has contracted over the last two quarters. However it is misleading, if not intellectually dishonest, to compare the growth rate for any single year across countries just like you wouldn't "cross a river whose average depth is four feet" to borrow from the author of Fooled By Randomness.
No, take a longer view instead. Which is what I did in the graph above which plots the cumulative growth rates of Singapore and Mauritius from a starting value of 100 since about the time Ramgoolam and Sithanen got into politics. By the end of 2007 Singapore had reached 298 or about 30% more than the 229 for Mauritius. Of course, everybody knows that the two island states were definitely not at the same level of prosperity and development back in 1990 which makes the performance of Singapore all the more extraordinary.
The parallel sinks further Dodoland when inflation rates and SGD exchange rates vs USD are factored in.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Singapore has had growth rates that are higher than our own in more than 70% of the 18 last years. Mind you, Mauritius has had a very good average growth rate of 5% but the Asian Tiger manage to improve on that by an impressive 150 basis points. Another yardstick of performance that is perhaps more relevant to Mauritius is the one of former Secretary of State, John Dulles: "The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year".
ReplyDelete