Curbs Needed Now

There’s been at least 80 Covid deaths so far in Mauritius this October. That’s close to half of the 166 official fatalities since the first one in March 2020. And as the chart shows we believe the real 7-day average of new cases to be almost sixteen times higher. At a minimum alphabetical shopping, daily publication of the number of PCR tests done should be restored immediately and a curfew initiated. More stringent measures should be considered after a better measurement of virus transmission tell us what’s going on. This, along with less opacity and not more, should save many lives and put us on a much smoother path to endemicity. As will a drastic reduction of non-essential interactions and masking up. 

Opacity Doesn’t Bother Covid One Bit

Mauritius Rich Enough to Solve Traffic Problem

If we assume for just one second -- though I fully understand that this could be a leap of faith for most of you -- that the Rs25-30 billion rupees Sithanen says we need to fix the traffic problems are correct then we don't need to borrow one cent from abroad because we are rich enough to do it with our own cash.

In fact if government had started to put money to solve this important problem back in 2005 our traffic problems would certainly have been reduced to more reasonable levels. See, the audit report tells us that about Rs5 billion is wasted every year or Rs25 billion over a 5-year period. So that if we had managed to cut a quarter of that waste and add the Rs5 billion gift that Sithanen wasted on the dead sugar industry and the Rs3 billion that were mysteriously lost at the STC that would have provided us with about half the amount he's looking for. Government could then have budgeted an equal amount in its capital budget spread over 5 years. After all, Sithanen did brag about putting Rs14 billion in an opaque and useless stimulus package, right?

Of course as the traffic would have become more fluid we would have saved on petrol consumption and pollution while seriously improving living standards of almost everyone at the same time.

But almost absolutely nothing was done to make this problem any smaller in spite of what a fiery Ramgoolam promised exactly a week before the last time we voted him into power. Berenger is certainly not any better. He promised us that a metro was on its way for five whole years. Talk is cheap. We need new leaders.

How Can a Casino Lose Money?

I don't have an answer to that. What I do note though is some kind of give-your-public-institution-a-bad-name-and-hang-it disease that has been afflicting our country for too long. Take the CEB for example. It was declared absolutely dependent on private capital about a decade ago and found guilty of all kinds of sins one of which apparently seemed to have found its way back into the 12th report the NESC has just released.

A craving which eventually translated into higher electricity prices for us and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seriously degrade the competitiveness of Mauritius Inc. That situation was so ridiculous that it even got a gullible Ramgoolam to do his chess-thumping routine nearly two years ago. What he termed a historic agreement then has still to make iota of difference for a super majority of voters.

Same issue at the CNT. How can it not be profitable? Well if you had a look at the types of buses that they've been putting on the roads for ages compared to the types of cars that they've been allowed to purchase you could be getting closer to a hint.

We know for a fact that the private sector doesn't have a monopoly over common sense or good management for that matter. We've seen proof of that again with the recent and controversial stimulus package: it seemed to be such a marvellous thing as long as it remained opaque. But the private sector can take some comfort in not having designed such an absurd scheme.

What's next? The privatisation of the anti-drug and smuggling unit?

How to Make the Stimulus Package Less Opaque

Here are a few basic ideas:

1. All the names of the beneficiaries should be published as well as a snapshot of their financials (including past profits and gross margin, dividend policy, top management's salaries and other perks over a five year period)
2. Summary of the reasons why taxpayers' money was dished out to them
3. The names and resumes of the independent financial analysts involved should be made public
4. The parameters that are going to be monitored have to be available and the circumstances under which the state will pull out
5. The government auditor should evaluate the program on a monthly basis and its report should be placed on the net

That's a start of course.