Lepep Pe Desan Lor Sime Pu Ki Ran So BRP

E aret latak lor so leta providans ki anpes 1/3 Morisyin tom dan lamizer. Ena pagli mami ki alor ki nu system lasante pibilk in krash ti dir resaman ki 18.5 milyar rupi ki nu depanse ladan en fardo mari lur. Anfet si ti bizin depans mem pursantaz GDP ki Sesel e nu ti gayn krwasans 8% ki ti sipoze gayne ek flat tax 15% Sithanen be nu ti bizin depans 93.2 milyar rupi u 5X plis.

Nu mark nu prezans Samdi 11 Ziyet, 13h, Sant Sosial Mari Ren de Lape ki truv anfas Lanbasad de Frans, Por-Lwi.

Anu Mizir Latak Zeneralize Lor Leta Providans

Pu fer sa nu kumans par estim komie GDP manke depi 2005 par rapor a target krwasans 8% ki Sithanen ti dir nu pu gayne ek so flat tax 15%. Ant 2006 ek 2024 fin mank 6,176 milyar rupi GDP (lamone 2024). Anu get depans guvernmantal pu ledikasion. Dan bidze 2025/26 sa depans la reprezant 3% GDP. Sa ve dir ant 2006 ek 2024 nun depans 185 milyar rupi an mwins (3% x 6,176 milyar). Eski 3% sifizan? Sesel depans 4.3%. Si nu ti depans kuma Sesel be nun depans 266 milyar rupi an mwins lor sa period 19 an la.

Pu lasante mank 154 milyar rupi e se akoz sa mem ki system la fin mari deteriore. Sesel depans 2X plis ki nu e si nu ti fer kuma zot be mank 309 milyar rupi de depans dan nu system lasante piblik lor period ki nu pe konsidere.

O total 1,235 milyar rupi anplis ti bizin rant dan lakes guvernman ziska lafin 2024 si reveni guvernman reprezant 20% GDP. Pu 2025/26 li reprezant 30%. Ek sa rasio la be 1,853 milyar rupi anplis ti bizin rant dan lakes la.

Nun usi azut ban kolon pu trwa lezot krwasans mwayin, 7%, 6% ek 5.1% (nu to krwasans mwayin ant 1968 ek 2005). Mem a 5.1% 487 milyar rupi anplis ti bizin rant dan lakes guvernman.

Byinsir ler li rant dan lakes la en parti ti kav met dan en Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF). Si nu ti investi 50% ban kas ki ti bizin rant dan lakes leta (1,835 milyar) dan sa SWF la a 8% zordi li ti pu vo 1,116 milyar rupi. Ki ti en zafer ase normal pu en pei ek otan dimun malin kuma Moris.

Why Recall Elections Are Seriously Overdue in Mauritius

Did Trickle-down Economics Work in Mauritius?

Sithanen-like Budget Provides Plenty of Fuel for Fresh Voter Outrage

There's a couple of good things in the budget like the probationary driving licence and larger fines to roll back the sloppiness that had put us on a trajectory of record road fatalities – though it's better that the fines are a share of income to remove the regressiveness – but there's also plenty of stuff that's simply not acceptable. Seriously the Lepep government now plans to sell our citizenship to attract more non-productive FDI which has been defacing Mauritius for more than a decade? 

Government needs cash for sure. But that is easy to obtain. It can add a few brackets at the top of the tax structure and things will start improving as public finances will regain a firmer footing and government won't have to spend that much time getting creative about budgetary numbers. It is also ridiculous to increase the custom duty on sugar more than five times to try to shelter that dead industry and at the same time make it easier for our greatest asset, our people, to see their human capital under-utilised or worse totally go to waste by 'opening-up' our labour markets in the most irresponsible manner.

Nice try fooling the middle-class people with the small tax break. But they know very well that they have already paid for it with abusive petrol and electricity prices for so many years. They can also compute our GDP growth in USD to refine their estimate of the bean-counting that has been going on and pause to think which pressing problems have been solved during the past three and a half years. They will surely realise that Ramgoolam, a neoliberal just like XLD and Berenger, would not have done any better. And remember that they will be voting soon.

How To Calculate The Sithanen Toohrooh

I am writing this following a suggestion to talk a bit more on the infamous Sithanen toohrooh. A good idea given that it is the product of the worse thing that has happened to us after slavery: the Sithanen flat tax. I started posting about the toohrooh almost seven years ago. And I can't think of a better way than to explain how I estimated it. So people can play with the numbers and understand how we've been taken for a destructive ride.

Actually you need very little data to compute the toohrooh: real GDP growth and nominal GDP. That's it. These are in the 2nd and 3rd columns. We'll show the computations for 2006 but bear in mind your numbers may be slightly off because of rounding error. Nominal GDP growth is computed from nominal GDP numbers of adjacent years. For example the 11.52% is obtained from 213,444/191,393. Implied deflator is a measure of inflation and is the ratio of the nominal GDP growth to the real GDP growth. That is we got the 5.61% from 1.1152 / 1.056 – a more precise calculation than simply subtracting real GDP growth from nominal GDP growth.

Growth needed is the robust 8% real growth promised by Sithanen for slashing our already low taxes grossed up by the implied deflator. We have to do this because GDP and government revenue numbers are computed in nominal terms. So far so good? So growth needed for 2006 is 14.06% (1.08 x 1.0561). With the last number we can get the nominal GDP compatible with an 8% real growth rate. This turns out to be 218,295 or 14.06% higher than the 2005 number. This is 4.851 billions more than the actual nominal GDP of 213,444 and it produces close to a billion rupees of revenue shortfall for our government for 2006 alone if we assume a very conservative government revenue to GDP ratio of 20%.

The numbers for the other years are calculated in a similar fashion. And we've added two cumulative columns to show how the size of the toohrooh has been growing for the past 12 years. As you can see the toohrooh closed 2017 at Rs1.2 trillion and will grow by another Rs300bn this year. You will surely realise that the cumulative revenue shortfall at the end of 2015 was already about enough for Mauritius to get herself a heavy metro system not the junk that's bludgeoning the Promenade Roland Armand.

On dit merci qui?

Mauritius, Here's The Plan

BR/QB elects Jack Bizlall on Sunday and we get a progressive voice in Parliament very soon. Then we identify 62 good candidates for 2019 who will raise the level of debate in our National Assembly by a lot. That shouldn't be too difficult to do when we know what has been going on there. Ramgoolam, Sithanen, Jugnauth, Collendavelloo, Boolell, Berenger, Subron, Duval, Soodhun and many others are definitely not on this list.

Sindikalis Pare Pu Zet Guvernman Si Banla Pa Aret Badine

CTSP pe diman guvernman donn bann dat kan lalwa travay retrograd pu amande sinon zot pu kumans enn kanpayn nasyonal pu Lepep pa eli prosin eleksyon. An dot mo zot pe anvi ki guvernman respekte so bann promes elektoral kuma inplemantasyon saler minimum ek organiz enn referandum lor Metro Express ek kolonizasyon CWA. Zot panvi Ramgoolam revini nonpli. Pa kav donn zot tor etan done ki Ramgoolam, Berenger, Jugnauth, Duval ek Collendavelloo pratik enn politik ekonomin neoliberal e antipatriotik ki pe kontinye mari kul Moris.

Inn ler pu avoy zot dan karo kann pu de bon.

Breaking Down The Sithanen Toohrooh

At Rs297 billion Xavier-Luc Duval accounts for the biggest share of the almost trillion-rupee GDP gap which accumulated over the 11 years ending last December. That's a couple of billions shy of our 2010 GDP. Vishnu Lutchmeenaraidoo is in second place with Rs227 billion which was generated over around fifteen months. Pravind Jugnauth is in third position with a Rs195 billion gap which also accumulated over fifteen months but he is set to capture the pole position by end of June when another Rs125 billion will be added to his running total.

Rama Sithanen, the father of massively regressive policies, is in fourth with only Rs85 billion because although he was there for the longest period among the six finance ministers the disease hadn't gathered enough momentum as it would in later years. That's how compounding works, right? This point can be illustrated by the GDP deficit generated on Navin Ramgoolam's watch: Rs79 billion although he was Finance Minister (FM) for only seven months. This puts him in fifth position and SAJ is last with Rs44 billion.

If you want to know how much revenue is missing you just have to multiply these numbers by 15% to 20% depending on the growth rates you assume the economy has to generate when you mess around with the tax rates. Finally a rough estimate of Ali Mansoor's share -- he promised back in 2006 to implement Bretton Woods policies that work -- would be the sum of the first three numbers.

Prosecution Commission: What Do You Think?

Government is rushing a bill to that effect these days. Antoine Domingue is dead against it and reminds us of what he predicted a couple of years ago. The fact that the proposed law is going to be retroactive has raised more than an eyebrow. And now the PMSD has just left government. And with it the super majority.

Shouldn't We Create a Fiscal Policy Committee?

Given how pervasive any changes to tax laws are. I mean we've seen what the flat tax of two university buddies have done to our economy and to the lives of our people. We've also seen how the same toxic bean-counting architects of probably the darkest pages of our economic history -- right up there with slavery -- have ended the part they played in it: the PM didn't exactly give them a standing o.

So, we could set up a committee with two persons on it: the Minister of Finance and the Governor of the Central Bank. Each one would have one vote. In case of a tie the PM can cast a vote. What better opportunity to allow avowed Socialists to show their real stripes?

We could but we shouldn't. We already have way too many institutions doing overlapping work. What we need though is the institutional capacity to analyze proposed policies in a totally independent and most rigorous way: the PPO.

Budget 2014: What Do You Think?

Here are summaries prepared by defi and l'express.

How did you find it?

Do Mauritians Need To Learn How To Save?

Not really. We were always big savers. For example the average savings rate during the 15 years preceding the Sithanen/Mansoor reforms was 26.4%. A few years into the reforms it had hit a 30-year low of about 12%. 

Hmm, so tax rates are cut by 50% and savings plunge by about an equal amount? That does make a lot of sense because people adjust their savings to keep their standards of living at about the same level.

So no, we don't need any advice on building a savings nest. What we need is to make sure that bean-counters are always kept away from policy positions. Because although they will sound the alarm they can also go on and screw up big time. Which is a darn good measure of their skill level.

Understanding Our Recent Budget Deficit Numbers

Did you notice that the bean-counters are crying on every roof that our budget deficit is under control at 1.8%? Presenting it as a proof that the so-called reforms have worked. It's quite easy to disagree with that.

Remember that the silliest idea of the reforms was to slash tax rates by half promising that we will grow faster. We know our economy didn't clip the required higher growth rates. In fact the reforms have ushered in a string of persistently low growth rates. So the small deficit numbers didn't come from better growth rates. We know it did not come from reducing wastage either: we just need to read the audit reports to strike this one out. So where did these low deficit numbers come from?

Well that's easy. By not spending budgeted funds and other essential monies that prevent the country from going to the dogs. And by doing other stupid things like keeping oil pump prices at unreal levels so as to pocket billions more in VAT and making us pay for a strange multi-billion-rupee hedging loss at the STC that seemed to get bigger as the toxic bean-counters got craftier.

Think of it this way: for many years hyenas have been trying to make an easy-going tiger run faster but instead of cutting the fat they’ve been taking out the muscles of Panthera Tigris. For personal consumption. And unsurprisingly this has badly crippled the big cat.

How High Should Top Tax Rates Be?

Probably not lower than 25%. See tax rates were as high as 60% when Uncle Nadess was Minister of Finance because we were just emerging from under colonial rule and the country had to be built. From the ground up. And pressing problems solved while diversifying a basket case economy. Treading intelligently, Vishnu was then able to lower taxes by almost 50% because the Labour Party had made the economy a lot more resilient and international conditions were a lot better. 

Rama then committed political hara-kiri by irresponsibly reducing them by another 50% and making an incredible number of dumb moves. This has created a multi-giga rupee toohrooh and a string of problems that, unsurprisingly, has stalled the economy.

Xavier has little choice but to quickly increase top tax rates back to at least 25% to avert soon having to increase them a lot more. Like what the French did recently. He might not though because flirting with brutal political extinction may be quite addictive.

Sik Yuen Exercises Ministerial Prerogative

And sacks Robert Desvaux as Chairman of the MTPA. Xavier Duval is not happy about this and wants Sik Yuen to either reinstate his buddy or quit as Minister. In essence the PMSD believes it is the owner of the Ministry of Tourism.

This reminds me of Obeegadoo's recent comments about how electors literally aren't allowed to vote as they please. And of Sithanen's week-long whining-cum-crying back in February 2007 when he wanted to usurp the Prime Minister's prerogative of picking the Governor of our Central Bank. There was also that circus about him insisting to stay on as Finance Minister beyond April 2010. Could this explain why his report on electoral reform contains perverse recommendations to institutionalise the ownership of ridings and ministries? Aka double candidacy.

Returning to the current situation remember that Ramgoolam's government has a majority of 38-31 and that the PMSD has 4 MPs in Parliament. If 3 Coqs leave Ramgoolam will still have a majority of one. Of two if Guimbeau supports Government. More if a few unhappy MMM MPs cross the floor.

Duval who said he was a reasonable man should do a reasonable thing: resign from Parliament and face his voters immediately as many of them don't remember empowering him to attack our rupee with our own money.

Hard-earned Anti-inflation Credibility At Risk

According to Governor Bheenick as inflation is expected to rise to around 6% by next year. And that's before the ridiculous 3.5% annual depreciation assumed in the recently presented budget. The soundbite also contains interesting insights into how the BOM tried to neutralise the increase in volatility in the forex markets caused by the irresponsible intervention of the National Resilience Fund -- which previously appeared as the Business Growth Fund.

Talk about a resilience fund, eh? It attacks our currency which makes 99% of us poorer. The pompous name is to try to fool us into believing that the extreme trickle-economics implemented since 2005 has worked. It has not.

We know that just by looking at the tax rates and growth rates over the last seven years.

Kisann-la Pu Gagn Eleksyon Minisipal?

Li pu enn test mi-manda pu guvernman ek enn indikasyon lafors remake 2000. Guvernman so politik ekonomik depi 2005 finn enn katastrof. Sirtu politik fiskal finn gangrenn nu pei. Problem se ki lopozisyon pli interese rant dan guvernman ki pran puvwar ek sanz politik ekonomik pagla.

Ramgoolam usi finn enn PM bien bien feb. Komie manda li bizin pu rezud problem pei? Enkor 12? XLD dapre lord pe senti li bien bien for. Li merit enn nuvo pri parski kan un deza tann enn minis de finans atak deviz so prop pei? Pa enn move lide u relir serman ki minis fer.

Anu gete ki lelektora pu dir... En atandan u kav vote dan nu dernye sondaz lor http://kozelidir.blogspot.com.

XLD: There Are Two Types of Actions

Cure For Insomnia Discovered

And it's free too. Just read the Government Programme delivered on Monday. And get ready to literally fall into a coma. For sure there are some good suggestions in there like the bill to cater for referenda. And it's simply awesome that government has now discovered that we are surrounded by an ocean. But the main trouble with this document is that it is a stack dump of ideas and statistics that have been cherry-picked. Little to do with the reality of 99% of the population. Besides it doesn't flow nicely. It's not integrated. It's policy spaghetti. The only thing that's missing on the cover is c'est un plaisir.

How much of it will actually be implemented? And will that make a difference? Don't hold your breath. Instead get an idea of where we're heading by going through the latest letter of development policy: "the fiscal position remains stretched and a counter-cyclical policy will be difficult to implement if the external threats materialize" writes Xavier-Luc Duval.