“The homo economicus Mauritianushas to morph into a mature and responsible citizen…

… balancing rights with the obligations required to thrive in our small, diverse, multi-cultural and multi-religious society”

Interview: Manou Bheenick

* ‘A model citizen does not abandon newborn babies; beat up the class teacher; mug bus conductors, impregnate underage girls…’

* ‘Countries like Botswana and Rwanda, which once emulated the Mauritian model, are now surpassing us while we struggle to recover from a decade of policy failure’

Former Minister of Finance and veteran technocrat Manou Bheenick reflects, in this incisive interview, on the “spectacular” economic trajectory of Mauritius since 1968. Having operated at the highest echelons of both technical planning and political decision-making, Manou Bheenick provides asearching analysis of the country’s transformation from a vulnerable monocrop economy to a diversified middle-income success. While celebrating a fifty-fold increase in GDP per capita, he offers a blistering critique of the “lost decade” (2015–2024), citing institutional decay and policy blunders as critical setbacks to the nation’s progress.

Speaking on the 58th anniversary of Independence, Manou Bheenick recounts high-stakes historical turning points—from early trade agreements with the EEC to the delicate “technocrat-politician” dance required to secure IMF support. Looking toward the future, he outlines the urgent need for a sustainable welfare state and a workforce ready for the AI revolution. It is a candid, comprehensive assessment of a nation at a crossroads, seeking to reclaim its status as a global development model.

Mauritius Times: As someone who has served both as Director of Economic Planning and later as Minister of Finance, how do you assess Mauritius’s economic journey since Independence in 1968?

Manou Bheenick: Nothing short of spectacular!
Our GDP exploded from a paltry level of around MUR 1 billion in a monocrop economy in 1967 to an estimated MUR 743 billion in 2025, produced by a well-diversified one. In per capita terms, it rose fifty-fold over the same period, rising from USD 250 to USD 12,500. I am not given to hyperbole but that is spectacular, wouldn’t you say?

Especially if you care to place it in the context of the initial political and socio-economic conditions prevailing in the run-up to the emergence of our country as an independent nation in 1968.

And provided you also take the trouble to gloss over the lost decade of 2015-2024 — when the country slipped into the kind of near-chaos, policy incompetence, strategy blunders, institutional decay, spreading fraud, sprawling corruption, drug proliferation, rising crime including political murders, public procurement boondoggles, yawning public deficits, rising indebtedness, and mendacity about the state of affairs in a manner that was reminiscent of the worst developing countries in their earliest years.

* Were there critical turning points where the country could easily have taken a different path?

Of course! December 2014 was one of them when we elected torush headlong in the wrong direction. But there were many such forks in the long road that has brought us to where we are today. Weopted for more prudent avenues more often than not.

To begin with, we opted for independence, turning our back to the nebulous alternative of association with the departing colonial power, which had the support of a significant part of the population.

We were among the first ex-British colonies to enter into an association with the European Economic Community in 1971 to safeguard our sugar exports when the Lomé Conventions were not even a distant dream.

We were steadfastly non-aligned, maintaining good relations with both the West and the Soviet Bloc, when many new countries chose sides and often paid a heavy economic price.

Both the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan had embassies/missions in our country, which came in handy in the early days of our Export Processing Zone. We traded with apartheid South Africa in products where it was competitive.

We did not forego judicial links with Great Britain and kept the Privy Council as our court of last resort, an anchor that boosted confidence of early investors who were shying away from resource-poor newly independent countries.

In the increasingly tense political conditions of the late 1970s, with continuous strikes and a battered government, with a razor-thin majority and barely surviving, we resistedsiren calls pressing for a one-party state, which was the norm in Africa.

Our Special Mobile Force, the closest we have to a standing army, stayed firmlyin their barracks when the 1982 election delivered an unprecedented 60-0 all-change verdict in favour of the Opposition, as it has ever since at similar critical turning points in the life of the country.

And there were many of them across the years. Let me just give one more example.

The MMM-PSM 60-0 government foundered on the rocks of the IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment Programme. Conceived in the dying days of the Labour government, and the subject of political fire from the then Opposition, it would have put the country at grave risk had it been disowned by the new regime.

My friend, the late MadhukarlalBaguant as Financial Secretary, and myself as Director of Planning, found ourselves as the stewards of this programme during the transition.

We had the arduous task of, on the one hand, quieting the fears of the Washington institutions, and on the other of selling it to Paul Berenger as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance to secure his endorsement.

I salute the statesman-like stand of the youngBerenger who chose country over party-political interest. He grasped this hot potato and paid a heavy price for it with the break-up of the alliance.

Kailash Ruhee, outgoing Minister of Economic Planning and Development, took us to La Caverne on the day he left office to present us to the Prime Minister at his private residence, telling him it was important for him to hear us out regarding some critical commitments which conditioned our continued financial survival in the next few months.

We were ushered in and provided a succinct picture to a tense SAJ. We were unprepared for the outburst:

“Mo p….r ar IMF ek World Bank !Mo pa pou donne sa pays-là à Bérenger lorene plateau !“

(“I don’t give a damn about the IMF and the World Bank! I am not going to hand this country over to Bérenger on a silver platter!”)

Such were the circumstances under which we had to struggle to save the programme and save the country’s reputation as a reliable and trustworthy partner.

SAJ recovered from the breakup and, at this critical juncture, benefited from the helping hand stretched out by the Labour Party. He ended up supporting the programme, its sequel, and their follow-up via several sectoral adjustment loans, in industry and agriculture.

I shudder to think about the likely consequences had we failed to persuade our new policymakers in the government to stay the course. Tearing up the programme and turning our back on the IMF/World Bank would have been a self-inflicted shot in the foot, or worse.

* Mauritius went on to become—and has indeed often been cited as—a development success story among small island states. However, is the economic model that served the country so well in the past still adequate for the challenges of the 21st century?

We are a recognized success story, and not just among small island-states. Our early post-independence economic history has served as a model for many countries in our region, including quite large ones, such as Namibia, Botswana, Rwanda and others. The trouble is that many of those who chose to emulate us are now getting far ahead of us because we lost our way during our lost decade.

The model which we followed was tailor-made for our specific circumstances, characterized by large sugar production, rising population, growing unemployment, skills shortage, limited infrastructure and so forth. The original model was outgrown rapidly.

We tweaked our underlying model as we’ve progressed, changing our policy environment to adapt to changing circumstances and to changing market conditions, as we moved from import-substitution to export-oriented manufacturing, and from a goods focus to services, and from export of surplus manpower to labour imports.

We have a dynamic economy, in fairly good shape, and it should purr along quite nicely, if there is no rollback on free trade andglobal market access, and no heightened geopolitical risk resulting, for example, from our ownership of the military base of Diego Garcia.

Obviously, we have to keep adapting to face whatever other challenges this century will throw up, beyond the known ones which are already exercising our minds. We are a resource-poor country, notwithstanding our vast Exclusive Economic Zone, and we have no viable alternative but to earn our way in the increasingly competitive world to be able to foot the bill for our food, fuel, pharma, and other imports. No one owes us a living, remember!

* However, while Mauritius has achieved significant economic growth, concerns about inequality and social mobility have increased. How do you see this evolution?

Our economic growth record is nothing to be ashamed of, if we overlook the last decade. Social mobility has been quietly growing, if we bother to look. But we could certainly have done better in combating growing inequality, or its perception.

The Gini coefficient moved in the direction of greater equality between, say,1995/96 to 2001/02 from 0.39 to 0.37. Equality had taken a turn for the worse by 2012 when the coefficient stood at 0.41, deteriorating further to 0.45 in 2017. By 2023, it had reverted to the same level of 0,39 as in 1995.

There are a couple of extraneous factors that must be reckoned with here. First, the policy of encouraging rich expats to establish residence here in top-notch ultra-modern villas in gated developments, has increased the perceived gap with the poorer segments of the population, more than interaction with rich vacationing tourists ever did.

The reality is that the State has ongoing programmes for providing affordable housing or financing housing construction to the weaker sections of the population, beyond the reach of normal mortgage financing. And the State provides an extensive range of welfare support as well as free, non-contributory, pensions to the old. Drug addiction could, however, be accentuating inequality.

The public treasury bears the cost of free health services and free education to all up to University level, which is tax funded. But equality of access does not add up to equality of outcomes. Much remains to be done to ensure better value for the tax rupee and better prospects for the beneficiaries.

* Regarding better prospects: what policy priorities would help restore the younger generation’s confidence in their economic future?

Restoring confidence among younger generations requires a policy agenda that not only widens economic opportunities but also empowers young people to think independently and navigate an increasingly complex information environment.

In an age where social media “influencers” often shape perceptions of success, wealth, and opportunity, young people need stronger critical thinking, digital literacy, and financial literacy skills.

 Policies should therefore focus on reforming education to emphasise analytical thinking, creativity, problem solving, and media literacy, not just rote learning.

I also believe that we need to integrate financial education from an early age so that the youth understand savings, debt, investments, and long-term planning. This should go along with digital literacy programmes that help young people recognise misinformation, resist harmful social pressure from online personalities, and develop independent judgement.

This shift would encourage a generation capable of forming its own opinions, rather than being passively shaped by the volatile, sometimes misleading, online world.

Younger generations often express anxiety about job stability, housing affordability, and economic volatility.

Policies should therefore aim to increase security, both financial and social, beyond what is currently offered by:

* strengthening job prospects through support for emerging industries,

* improving vocational training, and incentives for companies to hire and upskill young talent,

* adopting housing policies to make home ownership or affordable rentals realistically attainable,

* enhancing social protections, such as stronger unemployment support and mental‑health support services,

* creating safer public spaces,

* nurturing and developing entrepreneurial skills, and

* creating an ecosystem that encourages and supports start-ups with young promoters.

Rapid progress in these directions is essential for the youth to plan their lives with confidence.

Young people want to believe that the system works for them, not against them. Policies should prioritise upward mobility, more open recruitment and greater transparency in public decision-making, to rebuild trust in institutions and give youth confidence that their interests are being considered.

Sustainability-focused economic reforms, particularly in the green and digital sectors, which represent long term job growth and stability, should be a strong area of focus. More active youth participation in policy consultation will help to shape public decisions to reflect their concerns and aspirations.

* On the other hand, Mauritius has always been highly exposed to global economic shifts. How prepared is the country today for shocks such as global recession, climate risks, or geopolitical tensions?

As a small open island- economy, we have long been used to the ups and downs of the colonial, and subsequently, the international trade and exchange system. As for climate, it has always been part of the equation for the sugar grower that we were.

We are used to climate challenges such as occasional droughts or the seasonal cyclonic disturbances. But the climate risks which have now emerged on the global agenda are naturally sources of concern to us. Coastal erosion, global warming, marine pollution, sea-level rise are all problems of a different order which challenge all of us. Mauritius is a good global citizen on this score, and we support fully global actions designed to mitigate climate risks, especially in our part of the world.

We have taken economic shocks like the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 in our stride. I believe that we still have a resilient global economic framework to minimise the risks of any global recession and to attenuate its impact. It all boils down to the quality of our own economic policy response and prudential management. We used to have them in spades, but we seem to have buried them under the Covid-generated Scamsters Incorporated brand of management.

* The government has signalledthat major institutional reforms, including possible changes to the electoral system, may soon be examined. From an economic governance perspective, how important are institutional reforms for long-term development?

There is a growing consensus in the country that our electoral system, and some clauses in our Constitution that provide for it, have done their time and are crying out for reform. Indeed, the electoral platform of the current government flagged it as a focus of their program.

As most people now know, this is an entrenched part of our Constitution, which requires a three-quarters majority of all Assembly members voting to effect any change. The people chose to vote in an overwhelming majority. Government must get on with the job. Consultations are now ongoing to find common ground on the scope and reach of the proposed reform. We can expect matters to move fairly rapidly on this front.

A sound institutional underpinning is a must for (1) effective delivery, regulation, and supervision of a range of services, and (2) for carrying out specific functions entrusted to it, by the State. There are often good reasons why the State chooses to provide these services at arm’s length, instead of keeping them directly under ministerial or departmental control.

From only a handful at independence, institutions have proliferated over the years into a dense thicket of acronyms which may benefit from repurposing and streamlining to make them more efficient. A review is long overdue. Institutional reform to review their mandates, specify their deliverables, and give them key performance indicators, will smoothen the path of development. The review should also examine the root causes of their politicalcapture and deliquescence under the previous regime.

* Which fields of innovation will bemost criticalto the future of the Mauritian economy? Can the country realistically position itself in areas such as digital services, AI, ocean economy, or green finance?

The big bugbear of industrial policy was governments and policy-makers picking winners. Spectacular failures like British Leyland in England and De Lorean in Northern Ireland are held out as object lessons. But that may now be old hat.

The emergence of China as the Workshop of the World shows that government can get it right after all — if all other conditions required for success are met.

A country in our situation has difficulty in providing these other essential requirements to breed winners in the competition for industrial and technological products for tomorrow’s markets.

We must proceed with caution, or we may end up dilapidating public funds, as the last regime did in chasing its Hollywood dream: It ended up producing Serenitygate.

By and large, Government should provide not just the appropriate policy environment but also the ecosystem required to support private ventures in new innovative directions. If targeting means excluding other sectors from consideration, then we should not be doing any targeting. We should be open to all areas of activity where there is investor interest and for which we can put in place the conditions for efficient operation.

We are already involved in one way or another in most of the areas you mention. AI is in its early days. AI-led software applications are already there. Digital services are proliferating.

The ocean economy is a vast subject, and we should be open to realistic commercial proposals to harness its untapped potential. We do not have the resources to undertake pilot-scale research or envisage pump-priming investments ourselves.

Green finance is making headway.SBM Bank, which I chair, has established a Line of Credit with the “Agence Francaise du Développement” to support green investments in the country.

Geopolitical risks are something of a new priority agenda item for us who long supported non-alignment and a nuclear-free Indian Ocean. As the owners of an important military base, we can expect to be dragged into this debate, and we had better get prepared.

* Fifty-eight years after Independence, what would you identify as the three most urgent economic challenges facing Mauritius today?

For me, the number one challenge today is to make our welfare state sustainable. Our range of social support schemes, provision of free health and education services, our universal non-contributory pensions, and all other publicly funded welfare expenditure add up to a hefty 50% of fiscal expenditure. They gobble up to around70 % of our tax revenue.

To continue on this path, the easy route of increasing taxation is not open to us. At around 25% of GDP, we already take a bigger bite out of our citizen’s revenues than our peer group. Allowing the tax bite or the fiscal deficit to climb still higher, and stay there, would be suicidal.

My number two challenge is the Mauritian citizen, the individual, the homo economicusMauritianusin whose name elected officials frame policies and run the affairs of the country.

He has to morph into a mature and responsible citizen, conscious of his rights and obligations to adjust and adapt to life in a small, multi-cultural, multi-religious, polyglot country which has the potential to emerge as a peaceful haven of coexistence in this troubled world.

A model citizen does not abandon newborn babies, beat up the class teacher, mug bus conductors, drop out of school with minimal qualifications, impregnate underage girls, drive under the influence, generate ear-splitting electronic noise, assault police, attack his neighbour because of his faith, murder his elders for their pension money, damage public property, rape, rob, or steal — all of which are, alas, so common that they are treated as faits divers nowadays. Quite some morphing required there!

In that polity, my model Mauritian citizen would optimize his and his family’s benefits from free education and health to fend for himself in the world of work and assume responsibility for himself, reducing dependence on the State and freeing public monies to care for the poor and the needy. The enlightened State, for its part, would guarantee him a lower tax burden, and greater personal security.

Challenge number three is the Artificial Intelligence Opportunity that beckons. Its implications and repercussions are unfurling before our very eyes. The train is leaving the platform for an eventful journey. At the Delhi AI Summit last month, Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam announced that Mauritius is jumping on board.

Let us go on our AI journey with as clear a perception as possible about its early benefits for the way we work and live and earn our living. We must stand ready to re-engineer and reform all around usto harness the benefits of AI for our country and our people. A successful AI policy is the biggest challenge of our times.

* This brings us to the intersection of economic expertise and political leadership. Having served both as a technocrat and a political decision-maker, what insights have you gained regarding the dynamic between these two disciplines?

A pure technocrat, with no feel for the political dynamics of an electoral alliance, is cannon fodder. That’s Lesson Number One.

Lesson number two is to ensure that there is more economic expertise on the team, to begin with, and that the experts are (1) mostly looking in the same direction, (2) helping you to persuade the rest of the team of the merits of your proposals, and (3) not eyeing your seat while doing their best to have you ejected.

Lesson number 3 is to reassure yourself that the political leadership has the risk appetite to weather the downward part of the U curve which economic, and particularly tax, reforms usually follow before bottoming out and delivering on the expected results.

These are three lessons which I have learnt the hard way… but I am still learning. As central Bank Governor, these lessons helped me to sail very close to the political wind, turning my back to incessant calls for depreciation and repo rate decreases, espousing politically unpopular policies, but delivering on my mandate of price and currency stability.

* Looking ahead to Mauritius at 75 years of Independence, what kind of country would you hope to see?

Our 75th is only 17 years away. Which means that most of the underlying fundamentals are quite likely to still be there, barring the full effects of the changes already under way and those waiting to be initiated by our gouvernement du changement which, remember, has been in office for only 17 months now. Give it a fighting chance to put its teething troubles behind it!

We should add to that the eventual full impact of digital transformation running its course, the AI revolution now just getting under way, and the repercussions of other disruptive technologies that may go mainstream and affect an open economy, which I very much hope our country will remain.

We would probably have been transformed from a SIS —or Small Island –State — to a LOS, or Large Ocean-State, with a couple of islands attached.

We would also have moved to a cashless society, with the Central Bank Digital Currency replacing currency notes.

I am sure we’ll overcome the drug scourge, repair our stressed social fabric, regain our self-confidence as a country, rebuild our network of friendly diplomatic relations with regional and continental neighbours, and emerge once again as a haven of multicultural peace and social harmony.

We’ll be speaking our multiplicity of languages, practising a multiplicity of faiths, and getting on with the business of life in the quiet and determined way worthy of a top middle-income economy that we will surely be.

And, above all, we shall be a good global citizen, doing our fair share to save our planet and join in a common effort to rescue the free and open trade system and multilateral institutions as the world transitions from the Second World War relic of a global hegemon to a new dispensation founded on multipolarity.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 12 March 2026