Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Bheenick Dismissal is Inelegant and Silly

Our learned Central Bank Governor was sacked on Friday probably on the basis of an irrelevant section of our excellent constitution. This is kind of inelegant towards a citizen of this country who has been a great Governor. You might want to check how the inflation rate -- the biggest enemy of the poor -- behaved during his tenure. Have a look at the external value of our rupee too. A smoother transition -- like the last three times we changed Governors -- would have been more appropriate for the kind of country we believe Mauritius to be.

And the nearly eight years Manou has been at the head of the BoM has made life a bit easier for at least two groups of people. The first one is an overwhelming majority of Mauritians who experienced the tangible benefits of a common sense approach to managing monetary conditions. The second one bloggers like me who had one less thing to rant against.

He will be a tough -- but not impossible -- act to follow. Because there are many people -- across all party lines -- who have gotten used to the anti-inflation capital he helped build. Despite having to deal with Finance Ministers from very small parties who seemed to be confused about monetary policy -- and many other things. At best. And a Financial Secretary who appeared to have a natural predisposition to establish contact with little green creatures that wear an antennae.

And silly because his successor hasn't been nominated yet. 

24 comments:

Anonymous said...


Hahahahah


http://www.lexpress.mu/article/256927/ramesh-basant-roi-tete-banque-maurice

Anonymous said...

praise V.L as you always do ...

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

Appointing a guy with a strong depreciation bias is not exactly a good move. Especially in a country where voters have become a lot more sophisticated -- God bless the internet -- and pay close attention to a lot more things. But let's see.

Always praising VL? I guess you haven't read all my pieces where I talked about him. Have a look at this and this.

Anonymous said...

Lutchmeenaraidoo pe dire qui tous bane departements enbas so ministere pe fer pertes. Interessant. Qui sana ti ministre des finances derniers 2-3 ans?

akagugo said...

The first instance of "ploré mam" already?

Anonymous said...

V.L explains on defimedia that his choice is based on the fact that BR is very very experienced, full-stop!

Anyway, some work for you now, you can blog about the Governor for 5 years!

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

It's not a very surprising choice if you consider that our rupee was mostly depreciating throughout the tenure of VL as FM and that Basant Roi is a big fan of making our rupee worth less than it really should.

The internet is making all of us smarter. And I suspect there will be more voices that will comment on monetary policy and other topics that matters.

Feel free to set up your own blog. It won't hurt.

Anonymous said...

So now we got another pair of buddies who will join hands in depreciating our rupee? Duh - so no difference at all then ...

Why did we vote for them then, ah let me recall - these things were never discussed. instead we discussed other irrelevant stuff life 'palabres'

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

Lepep got that many seats because voters have priorities. For the last elections I think the topmost one was:

No to a dumb and dangerous second republic and other Sithanen constitutional galimatia. That's it.

Labour/MMM thought the elections had already been won back in April and absolutely nothing would prevent them from turning Mauritius into a banana republic. Blame it on excellent electoral simulations. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Et Kim il Sung dans tout cela? Le coeur fine recommence faire mal sirment.

Anonymous said...

and he worked for free as well1

Anonymous said...

And now he is under arrest! The poor man.

akagugo said...

Buying some time before the inevitable exercise of explaining all these things. But this should be much simpler than explaining these things...

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

Many of the documents are probably personal copies of official documents. Not sure a former governor can't keep those copies especially if he has scribbled personal notes in them. And I wonder if that's not the consequence of being summarily dismissed.

For a well-travelled governor the amount of cash and forex taken away from his wife's residence appear trivial. And nobody says all of it is his.

Ramgoolam of course as one of the most important local political figures of the last 20 years has no doubt been the one receiving the larger contributions. But let's see what he says.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure these docs are personal copies, there's no such thing as personal copy as these materials are work-related. So they should be kept in the BoM office only.

This is all very silly of him, because the info in these docs are far from 'Top secrets' ...and what could he do could with these anyway.

I heard Mr 'Rupee Depreciation' was also looking for these Docs .. but there must have been multiple copies of these ...all of which must be on the pc anyway

I hope he is cleared soon because seriously all this is looking very silly.

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

No such thing as personal copy? Really?

What do you make then of the fact that at one time or another there were foreign nationals sitting on the MPC. Surely they must have received confidential papers either by email or courier. How does the BoM make sure -- if ever it does -- that they don't keep copies of the documents?

Please enlighten me.

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

Also if I remember correctly Manou was getting about Rs32,000 per day as per diem 5-6 years ago. So if we assume out of the Rs1 million the CCID found at his wife's place 600k were in foreign notes then that amount would only represent per diem for one or two trips.

Anonymous said...

some contents of MPC meetings would have been circulated on email to all members, no doubt about that. The problem is with all the other docs - the list is in the public domain now.

Anyway the police will enlighten us soon. I find all of this ridiculous, wasting the tax payers money.

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

"The problem is with all the other docs"???

Don't you think you might be talking through your hat just a tad here?

12 boxes were seized. Boxes 8 (and not 7 as 7 is in the list of exhibits) and 9 were given back as they were deemed personal. So 10 boxes left. Boxes 1, 4 and 10 contain MPC documents. Box 3 mostly cheques and greeting cards. Box 2 international meetings file. 5 boxes left. Box 6 IMF working paper volume (you can download them for free from here.) Box 7 has BIS working papers (you can download those for free too) and correspondence. Boxes 11 and 12 mostly correspondence. So only two boxes left. One box left: Box 5 contains mostly minutes of proceedings.

"The police will enlighten us soon"? I am not holding my breath.

Anonymous said...

Don't download those IMF papers, the police might come after you to see if you've these in your office ...

They have a lot of (our) money to do this sorts of 'operations'

akagugo said...

Exactly - given his undisputed work ethic, he evidently had to keep personal copies for the purpose of working on them at any time he felt like. But this, some overzealous converts to the new regime will feign not to understand and interpret this in their own contorted way.

Anonymous said...

Interesting blog!

After reading all the comments here I am concluding that

i) there have been an attempt to create an impression that the former governor took confidential papers with him when in fact he did not

ii) people who do not like the former governor or who do not know why they do not like him have concluded that he did take confidential papers with him and that he had a money-laundering operation at his home

iii) the former governor did a very decent job at the central bank when we look at the evolution of the MUR while he was there and since he has left

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

Independence of institutions prevents that imperfect thing call democracy from becoming dysfunctional.

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

2/3 of the charges against Manou Bheenick were dropped today.