How to Burn Billions

State To Squander Billions, Again

The first time was when several billions of rupees of the fruits of our economic diplomacy were gifted to a sunset industry which at the start of the bean-counting reforms in 2005 represented a little over 4% of our economy. 10 years later its weight was four times smaller. Talk about a strategic blunder of epic proportions or is it a monumental skills mismatch? Naturally this was to be followed by sending our savings rate to a 30-year low and severing the link between international oil prices and what Mauritian voters paid to fill up their cars. To name just a few. So yeah, dumb policy-making had made Mauritius a lot more vulnerable and treaty risk a lot larger. Than it ought to have been.

Now another Minister wants to sink billions of a grant received from India -- who has millions to lift out of poverty -- into buildings we don't need partly because he's not happy with the amount of legroom he enjoys in our historic Parliament.

Did Etihad Airways Receive Subsidies?

No according to a former CEO of MK who works for the Gulf airline. Yes according to a group of American airlines who put governmental help dished out to Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad at $42 billion. Essentially by adding interest-free loans, capital injections, benefits of government guarantees, absorption of fuel-hedging losses and low airport charges.

A couple of months ago The Wall Street Journal mentioned that Eithad had sent a report to the US authorities acknowledging help of a little over $14 billion from its government. Some of that help was reported by the Australian Financial Review back in May 2014.

So I guess -- for our national strategic interest -- we should be very careful not to get mesmerized a bit too quickly. Air Mauritius has a brilliant future if it is allowed to operate on strong bases of meritocracy.

Gates Foundation Picks Kreol-speaking Economist To Head Strategy

In its Global Health Program, that is. Oxford-trained Beeharry joined the Foundation in 2005 and was until two days ago its Deputy-director for Global Health Delivery. He will lead a team of experts who make sure that the grant portfolio of the world's biggest private foundation has the maximum impact on health in developing countries.

Still not convinced about the importance of Kreol?

At Least One Major Arrow Is Missing

From the Education and Human Resource Plan for our country unveiled this week. And that would be from Labour Market to Higher Education in Figure 5 on page 26. If you don't understand why then you could be suffering from... linear thinking and should definitely read this to get rid of that disease. There may be much more missing but the 25-day period given for public comment on the 163-page report spanning a 12-year period is as ridiculous as the recent re-introduction of daylight savings time: it will get us to nowhere.

The plan is available here.