What You Can Learn From the Audit Report

In 2014 MT paid Rs671 million as dividends to government. Which means that it paid Rs447 million to FT. That's almost five times the dividend paid by Airports of Mauritius. And close to eight times the one paid by SBM Holdings in the same year. MT dividend paid only Rs221 million in dividends in FY ending June 2016.

One quarter of government revenue came from debt in 2014 -- one fifth by mid-2016. Which explains why the Sithanen toohrooh has gotten so big. As if we needed more proof that the bean-counter has been a financial disaster. Public sector debt (PSD) stood at a quarter trillion rupees at end of June 2015. Two-thirds of the domestic portion of that debt was due by mid 2019. Public Debt Management Act has its own way of computing debt as a share of GDP. PSD increased to Rs275 billion by June 2016. On dit merci qui?

Consolidated Fund has a deficit of Rs52 billion. Hmm, must be the early harvest.

I stopped at page 62 of the report. Here are posts on previous editions. And here's one from Singapore.

Mauritian FB Pages With The Most Likes

I googled but didn't find any lists. But it's not difficult to get a rough idea:

Air Mauritius: 520,672; L'express: 207,879; Lux* Island Resorts: 123,358; MCB: 104,479; Beachcomber: 72,249; Defimedia Group: 45,843; PMSD: 31,432; ION News: 31,348; SBM: 30,213; MMM: 30,172; Parti Malin: 27,975; Mauritius Labour Party: 27,825; Courts: 25, 268; Le Mauricien: 18,863; Flying Dodo Brewing Company: 13,670; J Kalachand: 5,474; MSM: 5,055; MPCB: 2,710; Le Matinal: 1,564; Kozelidir: 288 (Yahoo!); Conserverie Sarjua: 177.

So the PMSD and Party Malin have more likes than the Labour Party. I guess these two parties will win by a landslide in the next general elections. MK looks like it will be the first company to hit a million likes. When you deal with more than 1 million passengers every year surely it's no big surprise that you are right on the top here. But likes don't necessarily mean a lot as people like pages for all kinds of reasons. And page administrators don't all do as good a job.

Did We Need One in the First Place?

An additional stimulus package that is. I don't think so when you realise that our two largest banks have cashed in record profits in 2008: Rs3.7 billion and Rs2.1 billion for MCB and SBM respectively. That's an increase of 53% and 41% over the preceding year and twice their 2005 levels. I've already addressed why our banking industry has been spared (read this). So there's no trouble here unlike what has been going on in the United States and in the UK.

What we need instead is a government that solves problems. And that's the most important yardstick to measure the performance of any country. For instance previous governments did defuse the demographic bomb, implement free education and create the middle class. We need these kind of governments and not governments that have substituted brilliant work with dumb MBC reports.