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.

STC Hedging Mess is Rs1.7 Billion Bigger

So we were told a few weeks ago. That's 57% more than the huge Rs3 billion figure supplied in Parliament two years ago. And quite fishy too because the STC doesn't have any price risk to manage: it just passes it on to us through the APM. Besides, two years that's an awful long time for so many eyes to be fooled.

My hunch is that the STC never had any billion-rupee hedging losses but that we were forced to pay abusive gas prices to make up for the fiscal shortfall created by the Sithanen-Mansoor's flat tax experiment given that the proverbial robust growth rates never arrived. 

This aspect of Shaitanomics has already played a part in preventing us and our economy from participating in the global rebound underway by making a dent in our overall competitiveness. And Pravind Jugnauth's intention of increasing excise duties on petroleum by 10% will make sure it will have another one to play in keeping us in our economic slumber. He should instead increase the special levy on banks or nudge corporate taxes upwards.

All of this doesn't look good for Mo Ibrahim's poster child for governance, does it?

Global Schizophrenia

In a bid to overcome a "handicap" as he puts it, French education minister Xavier Darcos is planning to increase school exposure to English language, which he claims is a "key to success". Ironically, Dodoland could claim yet another achievement as probably the only country in the world where the global lingua franca is receding and French language is flourishing. But who cares? We are more competitive than Chad after all. N'est-ce pas?