Pump Prices Remain At Unreal Levels

Almost two years after they collapsed on world markets. The green line represents the evolution of IPE Brent oil after adjusting for the MUR/USD exchange rate while the red one charts local pump prices complimentary of early harvest and bumper crop.

And that's supposed to:

1. have made us more resilient during the financial crisis? 

2. be an external shock?

Beats me!

70% of Poll Says Aubeeluck's A Better Dancer

Than none other than Navin Ramgoolam. Indeed 21 of the 30 people who voted thought that Parti Malin's Leader got the moves.

The Myth of The Strong Rupee

You will be hard-pressed to find evidence of a persistently strong rupee in the graphic above that pits our currency against three harder ones over a long period. Indeed a USD was worth Rs11.91 on average in 1983 but about 2.6 times more so far this year. Similar story for the British Pound: you needed 17.86 rupees for every £1 twenty-seven years ago but as much as Rs47.50 on average in 2010 even though it came down quite a bit from its unreal peak of 2007. And the € was still 58% higher than its debut in 1999.

I always thought that entrepreneurs and currency speculators were worlds apart.

Understanding the US Oil Spill

And you can take a look at a live shot of the spill here.

Manou Back From the Dead As Rupee Sent To Hell

That's right. As of May 25 our rupee, as the table shows, had three of its 10 worst days in a decade against the greenback between May 17 and 19. That was enough to make May 19, 20 and 18 the last days of the three worst 3-day periods of the MUR/USD exchange rate since the world survived the Y2K bug. And you don't have to look elsewhere for the worst week in 10 years either: it's the five trading days ending May 20 when the USD appreciated by 5.10%.

Ti tann dir pa pu donn bibron dan godi...

Kozelidir Media Resources 2

Here's a second installment. Enjoy!

Pu Moris vinn pli riss

Kan depresiasyon vinn ene maladi

To krwasans en dollar komie

Prodwi ek lindistri ena zot sikl

Kifer li pa grav si enn lentrepriz ferme

Prev politik ki reform ekonomik ti mari dan dife

Kuma Sithanen inn fer Moris vinn plis vilnerab

Komie FDI bizin pu met nu pei korek?

Kifer IRS finn mor

Kozelidir Media Resources

I am making a number of sound bites that deal specifically with crucially important issues available to media people. Students of economics and citizens wishing to get their facts right will also find them quite useful. Think of it as another small contribution to raise the level of debate in our country.

Kifer entrepriz gayn problem

Eski bizin sov bann entrepriz

Santaz Bann Gourma Laminn Dipin (kuma u konne wen entreprener)

Kuma pe touye nu lekonomi

Ki fer nun perdi 25,000 jobs dan textil

Amenn sa baget mazik la (lala na pa ti la)

Don remed mem ler pa malad (pu kompran stimilis pakeg)

Ena resofe ladan mam (kuma nun turn en ron)

Ramgoolam Not In the Mood To Nurse GLDs

More precisely, here's what he said: Ki zot tile? Pran zot dan godi dir ayo papa Euro! Euro! donn zot bibron? Pa Pwena! Devaliasyon zame tienn solisyon. Nu bizin vinn pli konpetitif".

Kind of refreshing to hear. In any case the majority of citizens didn't vote for Berenger's team because they didn't want our currency to be depreciated.

Bheenick is also back at his desk since Friday afternoon and has stated that he will not be privileging a few at the expense of the many.

The $/€ Rate Since The Launch of the €

Funnily enough you will have trouble forgetting the rate the day the € was launched unless you never heard about la prise de la Bastille: 1.1789). 

For the first three years the new currency lost ground reaching a minimum of 0.8252 on 26 October 2000. But since 6 July 2001 till 15 July 2008 the trend has been resolutely positive moving from 0.8384 USD to 1.5990 USD. That's a 7-year streak if you're paying attention and must have helped build robust reserves for exporters with inputs in USD and sales in EUR.

It then fell quite a bit with the collapse of the oil prices especially in October 2008 but recouped more than half of the decline in the following couple of months.

The USD/EUR rate then trended positively for two quarters beginning March 2009 before starting a negative trend from its local peak of 1.5120 on December 3, 2009. 

It closed at 1.2497 yesterday which is more than 50% its all-time low.

The graph is from the ECB's website. Check out the adjustable data windows.

Procrastination Can Be Costly

On July 3, 2005 l'Alliance Sociale wins the elections but Ramgoolam doesn't appoint Bheenick immediately as Governor of the Central Bank. There are probably two reasons for that. The first one is that he doesn't want to compensate Basant Roi for ending his contract prematurely. The other is that Sithanen doesn't want somebody with an independent mind heading the Bank of Mauritius.

Things drag on. Too much. Bheenick is finally appointed in February 2007 -- seventeen months later -- and Sithanen tries to blackmail the PM by dangling a letter of resignation. That doesn't work but the damage is already done. Indeed the amount of inflation -- some call it radioactivity -- created between July 2005 and February 2007 is about 12.5%. That's more than half the high cumulative inflation of 23.9% generated by Federation 2 over a 4.75-year period but in less than one-third of the time. Do the math and you'll love the speed.

Announcing that Manou would stay on as Governor during the campaign has certainly contributed to Ramgoolam's victory just like his steady hand at the BOM during his first contract kept the PM's chances of reelection alive in the face of unrelenting Shaitanomics.

A lot of important and urgent work awaits the Governor-in-waiting. He shouldn't be kept away from his desk any longer.

Where Were You On February 6, 1975?

Because that was the day a pretty little thing called Gervaise spent the day crossing Mauritius. If you were old enough not to have been in diapers then you probably ate some faratas on that day.

The damage to our economy was extensive as you can imagine. You may also wish to take a look at a manuscript that Mr. Padya filed about one aspect of the intense tropical cyclone here.

So 1975 was not a boring year at all: February we get Gervaise and three months later students are on the GRNW bridge.

Student Protest Turns 35

I heard about it on the radio this morning and flashed back: I asked all kinds of questions but didn't get that many answers. Thought it was a cool idea -- anything that got me away from school was kind of cool -- and even wanted to join in. But I was told that primary students were not exactly welcome.

One Noor Adam Essack wrote about that event in Le Matinal today where he mentioned that students protested at the time because they wanted an education system that reflected our local flavour.

35 years later, are you happy with our education system? While you think about it I'll have my friend John sing something for us.

More Rubbish From L'express

The front page article on its website claims that 79% of the people who visited a news site preferred L'express. Visiting and preferring are not exactly the same. I know a lot of people who visit that website to get a feeling similar to the one they do when they eat funny mushrooms.

And the best joke of the week... the same article claims that according to Alexa -- the traffic monitoring site -- L'express is at 13th ahead of Twitter and e-bay!!! Lol.

L'express is in fact 13th in Mauritius but ranked at 55,425 in the world today. Twitter is 11th in the world while e-bay is 24th in the world.

Jean-Claude, don't forget to mention this new mistake in your editorial on Sunday.

Anti-graft Expert Blames World Bank

That's what Bertrand de Speville did in an interview in Le Mauricien this afternoon. Essentially he's saying the Bretton-Woods loan shark may be suffering from a we're-so-big-we-can't-be-wrong type of institutional arrogance and is responsible for the lack of progress in the fight against corruption in many countries. De Speville recently published book can be ordered from Amazon by clicking on the image below. I also recommend reading the very interesting Chapter 7 of Sebastian Mallaby's book.

Voters Give Ramgoolam Opportunity To Shrug Off Neocon Label

That's one way of looking at what happened 11 days ago. Granted things are looking promising for him given that the most neocon element of his last government was denied a ticket. And Bheenick's impending reconduction at the helm of the central bank will certainly be another positive development for a majority of Mauritians: the odds of another fatwa being issued against our poor rupee are pretty low.

Ramgoolam should seize this brand new opportunity and redeem himself. Right away.

57 Countries Had Better Growth Rates Than Us For 4 Straight Years

The years are 2005 to 2008 and the data is from the World Bank. That should steal away the thunder from the few bean-counters around who keep overselling their achievements as far as the management of the economy goes. Here are some of the countries that had better growth rates than Mauritius in each of these four years:

Argentina and Brazil (Lol! they turned their back on the Bretton-Wood sisters in 2005), Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mozambique, Russian Federation, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam and Zambia.

How do you like the perspective?

76 Countries Had A Better Growth Rate Than Us in 2008

And as you recall that was supposed to be the year of the bumper crop. Still that's a 100 spots better than our ranking in 2005 a year when our textile industry completed a major contraction.

MMM Promises Sparks in Parliament

So said Rajesh Bhagwan to Le Defi+ a couple of days ago. Congratulations Rajesh for finally remembering why we send an opposition to parliament.

Bono Turns 50

World Bank Blows Own Trumpet, Again

According to an article published in the media today reforms undertaken since 2006 have saved us by producing a higher growth rate during a three-year period. And given that the reforms were implemented by a Bretton-Woods puppet and his university friend who spent literally all his life working for the Washington-based loan sharks the World Bank is essentially asking us to be grateful and to keep on borrowing billions we don't need from them. Plus we should keep on listening to their crappy advice that has screwed up Mauritius for the past five years.

Hello!!! Anybody home? Ramgoolam had to unceremoniously dump Sithanen otherwise he would have become the leader of the opposition by now.  You already know how Malawi ended poverty, but did you know how brilliant they've been with the world's second lung? And it's nice that some NGOs keep track of the 'work of god' they do around the world.

By the way, this is our 500th post. Thanks for the conversations!