Pope’s Warning Turns One

Francis visited us exactly a year today and celebrated a wonderful mass in honour of Father Laval in Port-Louis. Later in the day he told a gathering of the civil society and the authorities to move away from the idolatrous economy we had been worshipping (understand by this speculative FDI, record inequality, national problems not solved, not enough regard for the environment and a degraded public health system because trickle down economics had made government run out of money).

Twelve months later, how much of this common sense has been heeded?

Another Pope, Another Mauritius

When he visits us tomorrow, Francis will find a Mauritius that’s very different from the one that greeted the most travelled Pope ever, John Paul II, thirty years ago. As the chart shows we’ve regressed in all but two ways. The cake produced over the four years before Monday’s trip (cake increase) is almost two-and-a-half times smaller, savings have collapsed, rupee has lost more than half of its value, road fatalities over the last four years are about a quarter higher and unemployment two times bigger. Inequality has also increased substantially. More on this later. 

Many of the problems we’re facing can be traced back to the 15% flat tax which has placed public finances in a critical position. Indeed at the end of 2018 there was Rs1.5tn of GDP missing which should have generated Rs300bn of revenue for our government. This would have made the latter debt-free. No wonder then that there’s plenty of signs we’re in big trouble the latest being that more than 50% of the vehicles at our fire stations and pumps don’t work. This shouldn’t be a surprise for Francis who has stated publicly several times that trickle-down doesn’t work. Let’s see what he says while he’s here.