Percy S. Mistry is a keen observer of the Mauritian economy. The author of “A Roadmap for the Mauritian Financial ServicesIndustry” openly reviews the local situation with an uncompromisingly critical eye.

Can Mauritius achieve a 5 % growth this year?

My belief is that the rate of growth will never reach the 5 %. I will be very surprised if it is  more than 4 %. I have done previous competitiveness foresight with the National Productivity & Competitiveness Council and have drawn a road map for the Mauritian financial services.

I have always maintained that the country is capable of achieving 6% to 7% growth, even just building on its own pillars. But taking the institutional structure and capability one step  further, I wrote A Roadmap for the Mauritian Financial Services Industry, 15 to 16 months ago. The former head of the Mauritius Financial Services Commission (FSC) was committed to deliver on it.

But so far as I know, not one thing has been done. If the road map was implemented, it would totally transform the financial services sector in Mauritius. It would have added much more value, created a phenomenon of export income but nothing has been done. Why’s this? Incompetence and incapability, a complete lack of vision and a propensity to indulge in illusion and political rhetorics.

What are the areas that can help Mauritius to build a sound and sustainable future?

Not the manufacturing area for  sure. Present people who delivered economic results in the 1980s and who are  in charge right now are completely misplaced. Technology is about to revolutionize the manufacturing sector. In ten to 15 years, there will be few manufacture processes in which labour will play a role, apart from maintaining the machines.

Going that route is probably the wrong one. My view is that the future  of Mauritius lies entirely in services. The island needs to become a logistical hub between Africa and Asia. Mauritius is poised to develop its ocean economy. It  has the largest and greatest unexploited resources, which means learning how to regulate oceanographic activity; whether it is sea bed mining, fishing, aquaculture or feeding China’s appetite for sea weeds.

That Blue economy is certainly an area where part of the future lies. Do Mauritians have the capacity to exploit all this? It is going to be exploited with the intelligent intervention of foreign players.

After the last General elections, a new team has moved in amidst a series of expectations, mainly on the economic front. What is your take on Ramgoolam’s years?

Navin Ramgoolam had in his hands the means to provide ten to 20 years of uninterrupted growth but his brain seemed to have slipped below his belt. The biggest tragedy is that the Mauritian political system proved that it did not have the checks and balances required to restrain and constrain this man.

I have the greatest respect for people like Rama Sithanen, who is an excellent technocrat. Even people like him could not keep this man between the rails, and neither could his cabinet. He did almost every thing he wanted. He used the Prime minister’s Office essentially as a licence to do almost anything. No democracy of an island like Mauritius should ever tolerate that.

And the press although it was quite critical, to its credit I must say, it obviously was not critical enough.

I believe the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) should be privatised. Even if you have a free press in the hands of the private sector, when you have television dominated by the public sector, it does a tremendous disservice to the country. And it should never be. Television is a very powerful instrument and the internet is gradually replacing it. But in some  fields and villages, people are still not used to the internet. They still get the news on the television. The MBC, as a public sector organisation, hurts Mauritius. It doesn’t help it.

What is your assessment of the aftermath of the General elections?

Like most Mauritians, I was quite pleased with the outcome. But now, one year later, I am terribly disappointed and I think that most Mauritians are. All kind of promises were made in a lofty, politically rhetorical fashion. Anybody who had any sense of realism knew that none of these promises would be kept, largely because some of them just didn’t make sense.

The promise of a new economic miracle  without any strategy, plan or tactics to devise some institutional machinery to deliver it... Miracles don’t happen like that these days. The fact is that the entire campaign was done essentially on the basis of a vote against someone, rather than for something. Ramgoolam did a great disservice to Mauritius. He unified the Mauritian vote to get him out. Having got him out, I don’t think that anyone has any idea of what to do with Mauritius now.

When I look at the last budget speech the President’s speech in terms of promising the new outline of economic miracle, what I saw was intellectual vacuum accompanied by a series of programme slogans that were completely incoherent, uncoordinated and unrelated objectives and made no sense. It did not amount to any economic strategy. It did not take into account that the world is dramatically changing with technology and that Mauritius is living in a globally uncertain environment.

But the worst thing I saw, within three months after I left last year, was that the cabinet and the government that were instituted seemed to me probably the most incompetent in living memory. In that sense, Mauritius is doing the same thing India has done.

I see ministers not having the least idea of what their brief is, who simply do not have the expertise, the knowledge to do the job. In some ministries like Foreign Affairs, you have exceptionally capable civil servants and diplomats. But I don’t see them in key ministries like Finance, Education and Human Resources or Home Affairs division. I just do not see the competence Mauritius needs to take it to the next level.

Should we understand that you are focusing on a leadership issue?

Sometimes, I get the feeling that Mauritius is a cruiseship where the captain has gone for a long nap, where the crew is walking around on the deck wondering which way the wind is blowing and where the passengers are eating and drinking happily. No one quite realises that the ship has lost its anchor, that it has no compass and nobody at the steering wheel. What is worrying is the amount of vitriol and vindictiveness in the system. One year has passed. Do we see the foundation of the miracle being built? I don’t. What this government has been doing for the last 12 months is wasted. They are getting at political opponents to destroy them. See the way this government has handled the cases of Manu Bheenick and Dawood Rawat, the way in which the head of the FSC has been summarily removed, while she was one of the best leaders of the financial services sector you have had since a very long time.

The government, rightly or not, used a series of arguments to justify its decisions. Will the means justify the end in five years’ time?

All this is going to rebound very badly on Mauritius. What these people in power today need to remember is that what you do today will rebound on you tomorrow. This is exactly what has happened in India. Narendra Modi, despite his mandate in the Lower House, is not able to govern India because of what the

BJP did when it was in Opposition.

Now with the way this government is behaving with its opponents, the way it is harassing people senselessly before having determined their guilt is absolutely to no one’s credit or benefit. The way in which certain ministers in this government are behaving will ensure that, if the people who were in power before come back into power again, they will feel obliged to settle scores in the same way. That is going to hurt Mauritius badly when the next election comes if a cycle of viciousness is established that might continue without end. It is time to stop this NOW.

Is the Mauritian situation so bad that it cannot be reversed?

If I had a message to deliver I would say : stop right now, think about what you are doing, reverse course, repair as much damage as you can and get on with the business of governing the country and improving the lives of the people in very uncertain times. Instead, you are infusing yourself throughout the system in total incapability and are demoralizing your civil servants. They will stop functioning and will become totally defensive. They will not take any decision which serves the interest of Mauritius simply because they are worried about being made scapegoats in the way that so many people have been made scapegoats.

Stop this childishness; get rid of this climate where everybody in Mauritius is afraid to speak. I am speaking as frankly as I can because nobody in Mauritius who should be speaking is doing it. Everyone is afraid. What should they be afraid of? How can anyone frighten you so much?