Who would have thought? We are already in December 2020 and it just felt like yesterday when we started this year. What a year!
I recall a number of times prior to the “Covid” lockdown in March, I used to tell relatives and friends, whenever I was in Mauritius, that Mauritius and Mauritians living in Mauritius have had the tendency to live beyond their means over a number of years. I can’t blame them, as over the last 10 years, successive governments, Ministers of finance have relentlessly told us that Mauritius is sound and resilient. How many times have we heard the word resilient in previous budget speeches? Fast forward to today, and I see a number of my fellow Mauritians, still naively believing that the economy will be back on track next year.
Let’s pause and think for a while. After this deepest economic contraction, obviously we will see growth, but at the same time we should be careful not to celebrate too quickly about this growth, because by end of 2021, we will not have reached where we were in 2019. And the country would have had far more debt than in 2019! It’s like running a marathon. Imagine, you were running 10Km/hour for a race of 50Km. And half way, you are told to stop and wait for 1 hour (time loss), and then you are told to restart running but this time you will have to carry an additional 50Kilos on your back (extra debt!). How can you run at the same speed before you paused for that 1 hour? For how long will you be carrying this extra 50Kilos? Will you ever shed the 50 kilos down or up the road? Or would you be told to pile more kilos later as you start running? This is where Mauritius is. A more indebted country than before, bearing in mind that our debt level pre-covid was already being questioned. Debt is fine if you are taking money to invest in productive assets and value creating projects. But once more, let’s look back and ask ourselves how many investments done by government were really value add? And close your eyes, and think based on what we know, how many projects announced by the current government will be real value add?
It’s clear to me at least, and more so during this Covid-Crisis, that Mauritius is at a real turning point, the end of a chapter. What will be the next chapter? Not so sure, given that the same people who wrote the current ending chapter and previous chapters are also the “authors to be” of the new chapter and forthcoming chapters. What’s a pity, is there have been absolutely no radical ideas that have come out during the last 9 months! Nothing drastically different to what was laid out pre-covid, to give us a glimpse of what is the vision for the island. It’s almost like a ship lost in the ocean, and just being carried away by the wind or waves. The ship is moving, but no one seems to know which direction it is going?
I have had and still have the opportunity to deal with my fellow Mauritians in Mauritius at all levels, and when one sees where there global world is moving, how geo-politics will redefine a number of economies, how digital and technology are becoming the centre of everything we do, how space economics is the next big thing, it saddens me to see that Mauritius seems incapable to jump on the new train that’s about to set off. What Mauritius clearly needs is a massive upgrade of its human capital. Local players with local mind-set will not be enough for this new chapter! The New World New Normal can be tackled if we have an open mind-set, if we agree that no one has a monopoly of ideas and if we open our arms for new ideas and even radical ideas. Mauritius is a tiny nation, and this radical transformation of the economy can be done and quite easily, but we need the right persons for the right jobs. Let’s do the quantum leap jump that South Korea did within less than 2 decades. Let’s be bold, innovative, and daring in our thinking.
