Padayachy’s Obsession With Doing Business Could Prove to Be Politically Fatal

I mean Sithanen slashed top tax rates to get 8% growth and introduced the Doing Business Index (DB) as some kind of economic holy grail. When we never got the higher growth rates he told us it’s the fault of the Great Recession but they’d be on their way as soon as it ends. That downturn ended almost eleven years ago but still no trace of the 8% growth. In the meantime we’ve been bombarded with useful idiots presenting 3% growth as good. Even if it’s less than half the promised target while the country has been falling apart.

And Padayachy doesn’t talk about the 8% growth required to keep the regressive tax rates at all. He instead shifts our attention to the DB rankings trying to convince us that they are so important that we should aim at a top ten spot – we’re currently at the 13th place – and even a top five position. That would make sense if changes in the DB index were strongly correlated with growth. But as the chart shows they are not. At all. At least for us.

Now that the pandemic is here we’re all seeing how vulnerable the flat tax has made us and how close to bankruptcy our country is. 

Another Reason Why Doing Business is Wrong Target For Mauritius

World On Display in Milan, For Six Months

Beginning May 1st for the Universal Exposition. Over 130 countries are going to showcase their answer to the expo's theme of "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life". It's a hell of a great opportunity to brand a country -- or to get inspired how to do it.

Many Africans countries will be there -- including the Seychelles, Rwanda and Ziwbabwe -- but I didn't see Mauritius in the list. Too busy with the Mo Ibrahim index? Or is it the Doing Business index?

If you're not heading to Milan you might want to get busy trying one of these 123,506 recipes.

Mansoor Pe Dir Reform Finn Port So Frwi

Pu li reform kinn kumanse depi 2006 finn fer nu gagn bon rezilta depi kinn diminie bann tax rates: nun gagn plis reveni et pli importan nun resi kree enn bann jobs a traver relans investisman.

Ah bon? Abe kifer alors li ti pe dir dan so bann sirkiler ki reveni pu en bes ziska 2013? Ek kifer malgre nun gagn 40 milyar FDI buku dimunn finn vinn mizer? Ek kifer so larme sek kinn donn li job FS la pann poze kuma independan dernye eleksyon zeneral? (En plis AM ti kav fer so campaign manager). Ek kifer nu depans plis kas pey linteret lor nu det ki nu investi dan ledikasyon?

Eski nu bizin koz lor kinn ariv nu savings rate? Uswa ki moris pann partisip dan rebondisman ekonomik mondyal? En plis li pa paret konn fer diferans ent monte ek bese.

Pa fer riye do...

Education Spending Not Alone in Falling Behind Inflation

So we learned today from the DPM. Expenditure on major pipe replacements for the past five years have been as follows: 2005/06: Rs225 million; 2006/07: Rs200 million; 2007/08: Rs160 million and 2008/09: Rs150 million; and Rs210 million in 2010. But Rs400 million have been spent in 2011.

The only two things that seemed to have kept up with rising prices are the crappy working paper industry and the attention given to crappy bean-counting indices.

How Much Sleep Should You Lose Over The Doing Business Rankings?

None. See, it's not correlated with any of our national priorities. But we just lost 3 spots I hear a few of you say. Indeed, but that's 3 times less than the 9 spots we lost back in 2007, the year of the... ahem... early harvest. Still, given that we don't want our friends at the Joint Economic Council to do anything foolish during the week-end here's something to cheer them up: Mauritius has moved up 50 places in the Logistics Performance Index in the last few years from a miserable 132nd spot. By the way, if you average out our rank in these two indices you end up with 52.5 which is very close to our 54th place in the recently published 2011-2012 Global Competitiveness Report. Which is a more comprehensive yardstick.

Sleep tight.

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.

Doing Business Rankings Oversold

No one will disagree that when it comes to red tape less is better than more. Which is what the World Bank's Doing Business (DB) survey was supposed to measure and nothing else. A tagline – measuring business regulations – was even added presumably to avoid intellectually dishonest souls from marketing it as something it simply isn't.

However the recent report by the WB's own Independent Evaluation Group finds that the list is fraught with problems: too few informants, lack of transparency and high volatility of ranking. More importantly, it cannot be used on its own so that you'd better combine our 24th place in its 2009 ranking with our 132nd spot in the Logistics Performance Index to get a better picture. Which means that you have to heavily discount most of the stuff you hear about the DB survey.

Doing Business is Junk says World Bank

Pourquoi Doing Business Est l'indice Préféré Des Abrutis

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?