Moris Zindabad!

At $8.99 per month, your basic Netflix account didn't seem expensive so you went for the premium one at $15.99 - not much, really at Rs 36.50 per US$ back then. But just wait until you'll need to renew your subscription to the tune of Rs 680, instead of Rs 582 pre-COVID era - Rs 100 more per month! (It looks like you will have to add another Rs 100 for VAT purpose regardless of how they will be siphoned) . All that because since then the US$ has soared from the pre-March 2020 levels of Rs 36.50 to above the Rs 40 mark at present. The World Bank has started classifying Mauritius in the 'High Income' category in July 2020 - the slide of our Rupee has boosted the number of Rupees that the World Bank's arbitrary threshold would give you. But did that make your life more comfortable than before? To explain this, the PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) is handy: though imperfect but closer to our reality, it is a means of weighting how much people make by the cost of living

 La colère par rapport à Wakashio ne fait que cristalliser le mépris de nos politiciens. Wakashio expose cruellement les défaillances du système mauricien rongé par la corruption et laissé à lui-même. Depuis longtemps la réactivité des autorités face aux urgences augure la désolation. La négligence par rapport à l’environnement n’est que reflet de l’obsession de la vente de villas aux étrangers et la financiarisation de l’économie. Toutefois, la première des priorités demeure les inégalités meurtrières que ce système engendre et qui se manifestent à travers la baisse dangereuse du pouvoir d’achat et la crise du logement. Nous aurons souhaité que la prochaine marche organisée se fasse en mémoire de Matéo, ce bébé que ce système pervers n’a pas sauvé. En souhaitant rassembler un très grand nombre de citoyennes et citoyens – partisans et bobos inclus, il va de soi !

To stay pertinent to the reality of similarly open and small economies such as Singapore, Estonia and Hong Kong, may the following sink in:  Firstly; " Evidence shows that depreciation does not significantly improve exports, but that exchange rate risk significantly impedes exports. In sum, policy makers can better promote export growth by stabilizing the exchange rate rather than generating its depreciation". Then;  "In the presence of high import content (like in the case of Mauritius), exports are not adversely affected by currency appreciation because the lower import prices due to appreciation reduce the cost of export production". Last but not least, let us listen to competitiveness guru Michael Porter; "Devaluation causes a nation to take a collective pay cut. Exports based on low labour and a cheap currency, then, do not support an attractive standard of living.  T he central challenge is how to create the conditions for  productivity  gro

Zordi mo ti demann mo tifi ki ena 15-an seki li panse lor deba pou introdir nou lingua franca dan parlman. Li pa ti kone ki bann depite Moris oblize koz zis an angle ek franse. Ala so reaxyon : « Fer pitye. Ki, zot onte pou koz zot prop lang ! »  Koumadir finn bizin plis ki 50-an pou koumans gayn enn konsansis lor sa size-la parmi bann ki sipoze amen sanzman dan peyi. Seki nou kapav souete seki nou pa atann lontan ankor pou ki sa vinn enn realite. Ala explikasyon ki monn sey done : Souvan dan kontex pos-kolonial, setadir apre 1968 pou nou, boukou ex-kolonize res mantalman kolonize pandan lontan. Nou ena tandans rezet tou seki nou asosie ar nou direkteman. Par kont, nou  fier kan nou imit nou bann ansien kolon, dan nou ka se bann dimoun ki resamble bann eropeyin. Pou aprofondi lor sa size-la, li esantiel lir Frantz Fanon, Jack Goody,  Ashis Nandy, Edward Saïd ou Ali Shariati. Ena bann ti lespri ki panse ki nou langaz morisyen pa  «  neutre » parski nou osi apel li kreol (ki e