What will be the economic future of Mauritius after our second Covid 19 wave? The island, without any natural resources, rely solely on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to sustain its socio-economic life. We have so far operated different programs, all based on FDI : exports, tourism, financial services, immigration schemes and luxury real-estate, for instance.

For around 12 past months, we have been shouting our Covid-free status on all roofs – and we have been very naïve in forgetting that the virus is still very active everywhere else. The population led its life as normal and even the Government seemed to have been trapped in the prevailing nonchalance. Despite the existence of well-defined protocols around our international frontier, many have been able to sneak in without any other formalities than a normal flight. No quarantine for diplomatic missions or other personalities, as if having a certain status also comes with immunity against Covid 19. The population has been questioning the protocols applicable to passengers of private jets. Well, I felt interesting to mention this despite it not being the subject of this article.

How will Mauritius survive? The question is here. The common Mauritian is an expert in everything: football, other sports, politics, geopolitics, economy & finance, management, anything – you name it. If you do not believe me, let’s meet on a bar terrace someday (after the lockdown, of course). This huge reservoir of grey matter tends to convince me that there’s no reason to panic. We will find the solution or it will flow down from heaven. Well, I feel everybody thinks the same, even decision makers.

There is a total absence of real decisions, strategic thinking and vision.  Now that our ‘Covid-safe’ argument is busted, it seems we are in a vacuum, devoid of any thinking faculty. Even those who get (I’ve not used the word ‘earn’) hefty pay just to think are not able to perform – well, they rarely do.

Tourism is in a coma and nearing death. It is useless to lament ourselves on the reasons, using of course Covid as the main element. The truth is that Covid was just one of the visible excuses of a death announced well in advance. I said it before, we do not have a tourism industry, we have had, so far, a hotel industry. We built hotels, took away public beaches from Mauritius. Besides the concrete walls of hotels and beaches, we did not take the time to develop anything else. No leisure industry development, no infrastructure or attraction for tourists. Nothing… not even an aquarium that deserves the label. All this because some of our licensing bodies (mostly those at their heads) believe that the island is their property. For an insight, how relevant are the rules: any restaurant having more than 40 seats has to get a Tourism License to operate. How relevant is a Tourism License based on the number of seats? And how relevant this is now, when there’s no tourist on the island ?  This all stems out from incompetent people sitting on the wrong chairs, taking decisions arbitrarily, most of the time depending on their mood of the day. These are people nominated for their proximity with the ruling party or because of their relationship – They have spent all their days sitting behind desks and yet act like the all-knowing Pashas. Nothing else. International flights to Mauritius have always been treated like a ‘God-only’ subject under the hands of some who vomit big, but meaningless, words. The excuse was protection of our national airline, which in meantime, caused its own death. So much hypocrisy. Air Mauritius committed suicide through its nonsensical overheads mostly constituted of hefty paychecks to, again, incompetent people. I’m not familiar with those big words and equations but I could clearly see the national airline killing itself softly over time.

Financial services has the same fate. Big words, nothing else. We ended up of different blacklists, including the European Union’s. We started the offshore sector knowing well what this entailed. Why did we spend so much energy on a sector that was known to carry certain risks, knowing that it was based on huge doubtful money transaction, opaque finance movements, and above all knowing that secrecy and low fiscal regime is what offshore operators look for ? Why this hypocrisy in defending our classification as tax haven and denying the loopholes through which major financial scandals have occurred? We have lied to ourselves so much that we started believing we were right. We are always right, defending the undefendable. We could have developed a proper financial sector, based on transparency and modern products / services. It would not be that attractive for many, I bet.

That same energy, investment and effort would have been better used if engaged in technology sector, for instance. I am not referring exclusively to information technology (I have to mention this as many of those political nominee limit their understanding of technology to this).  Licensing authorities, again, have failed to appraise good projects in their usual attitude of favoring only their relations. We have issued numerous online gambling license to ‘Mauritians’ operators with no prior experience of such business and in the same breath created a large population of betting-addicted people. On the other side, we rejected many online casino licenses from established brands, which were to operate on an international market with a certain purchasing power. FinTech or Blockchain … just look around. So many excuses for our officials to travel abroad for conferences, roadshows and other gimmicks while they do not understand the basics. Are you surprised to see almost no business initiatives around these? Robotics, medical and scientific research, biotechnology, anyone?

During my 27 years in business creation and management services, I have seen so many incoherence, stupidity and incompetence that I could write a book. I will someday (after retirement, if that happens). We can have lengthy theories, calculations and hypothesis but all this will not work if do not have have the guts to nip it from the bud. The foundation of everything has to be reviewed and this involves:

Nothing will be achieve unless transparency prevails. Government may well implement schemes and beg our fellow countrymen to come back (and serve) the island they left decades ago. Give them duty-free incentives and what not… it hasn’t worked and won’t. These decent professionals will not return to a rotten system and work under the directives of incompetent nominees.

Let alone progress, we cannot expect survival unless the whole system is reviewed.

Nadeem Mosafeer

http://www.gibsonandhills.com