Reform or Rebound?

Ramgoolam bragged quite a bit about that 9.7% growth rate while he was the now-we-know loyal Leader of the opposition. Nothing spectacular really happened in 2000 except perhaps the most foolish way for any of our Prime Ministers to lose power. For something out of the ordinary we need to backtrack one year when a 1-in-every-40-years drought showed us how inadequate infrastructure could cut our usual 5% average growth by 60%. In other words the impressive clip at which the economy surged back in 2000 had nothing to do with Ramgoolam: it just rebounded.

In 2006, we similarly returned to an average performance mostly because the textile industry started to grow again after contracting and consolidating for a few years (more than 25,000 jobs were shed during that period). In fact the rebound in that particular industry accounts for over 50% of the 2.7% increase in the GDP growth rate. So that has nothing to do with the so-called reform of Sithanen: the economy simply bounced back.