2013: The Year in Review (Q4)

October: Ramgoolam sends toxic bean-counter packing. Ferguson is fan of Pele. Mansoor found Mao's cat. Munro may write again, after winning Nobel. Go ahead, make some good mistakes. Rose-Hill Transport takes service to new levels. World's most beautiful woman turns 40.

November: Desvaux says Illovo split switched after meeting. More proof crisis is homemade. 15% flat tax is enemy of good growth. Shouldn't we create a fiscal policy committee? Cricket-crazy nation says goodbye to Sachin. UK Prime Minister sends letter to Forum. How our Standards bureau can save lives. Mozart of chess becomes World Champion.

December: World to mourn Madiba for several days. Bheenick should make Vision 2020 public. Suarez wins player of the year award. Meeting Yvon St. Guillaume. 7.7 milyon malgas vote.

Read the review for Q1, Q2 and Q3.

Desvaux Says Illovo Split Switched After Meeting

With SAJ from two-thirds/one-third to one-third/two-thirds of the windfall gains in favour of the private participants of the deal. So he said on a private radio on Tuesday. Desvaux was the right-hand man of Berenger when the latter was Prime Minister between 2003 and 2005. And before that too.

Sydney Selvon has come to the rescue of the 'remake' by saying that JMD was a "Mr. Nobody in the media" on the FB wall of the LP. Maybe he was -- and that's irrelevant anyway -- but he also had the ear and the trust of one of our former PMs. So he doesn't exactly qualify as small fry. Even though his understanding of how the economy works is sketchy at best.

SAJ has denied the allegations made by JMD while Berenger was not too convincing at their press conference yesterday.

Isn't it Ironic?

About nine years ago a chairman of the CEB declared that the public utility didn't have the financial means to expand so that it would have to rely on private capital. That reliance translated into the fleecing of its customers as the CEB ended up, quite conveniently for some, buying power at uncompetitive prices. At about the same time our government offered its guarantee without which the infamous Illovo deal wouldn't have gone through.

Fastforward to the present and a section of the private sector now wants taxpayers' money to apparently stay afloat and to avoid having to sack people and they don't guarantee that they will not eliminate jobs even if they get saved by government. That's of course after the rupee was depreciated from twenty-five to the USD to about 35, interest rates were cut and corporate tax rates were slashed. And the Joint Economic Council is now going to ask for help just in case they might need it.

What do you make of all this Alanis?