BOI To Promote Occupational Permits Overseas

Because it wants to increase the number of people holding them by 500-700 to 5,000 according to Le Mauricien. If that's true then dumbness has become a national disease. Because we have a serious problem of unemployment in this country -- probably close to 12% -- and many thousands of young graduates are not able to find jobs let alone meaningful ones. Let us not even talk about the likelihood they'll be able to buy a decent house with all the real-estate speculation that has been going on for 7-8 years now. And frankly I don't think that's the way you solve one of the worst cases of brain-drain in the world.

The BOI should definitely get serious about the types of investments and people that are allowed to come in our country. Young graduates should be allowed the maximum of opportunities to get smart.

BOI Chairman Calls Mauritians Beggars

In an interview published yesterday. That's an insulting and highly inappropriate statement especially for someone who travels the world over seeking investments into Mauritius. He should apologise and tender his resignation.

What do you think?

BOI Misses Targets

The Rs15 billion of foreign direct investment target that Raju Jaddoo has set for 2009 is in fact the target Sithanen had for 2008 (see paragraph 9 of the 2008/09 budget). As only Rs11.4 billion poured in last year, the BOI fell short by about a quarter.

The other target that Sithanen/Jaddoo had was to rank Mauritius in the Top 10 places of the oversold (see here) World Bank's Doing Business survey in 2009. That didn't happen either: Mauritius clocked only a 24th place. In fact the best ranking we ever achieved in that survey was a notch higher and it happened, as the table above shows, before the bean-counting reform of Mansoor/Sithanen.

Finally, why do we have to borrow Rs600 million in USD from the World Bank for some dumb project called Mauritius Economic Transition Project when Government has been awash with cash from overtaxing us for so long? Who exactly benefits from Mauritius being saddled by Sithanen and Mansoor with all these billions of rupees worth of loans in foreign currency?