The hotels are clamouring to know when the borders will reopen and are demanding more clarity on when the airport will start working again. And they are right to demand some answers from the government.

Since March, the hotels have been empty, save for some doubling up as quarantine centres and the economy has taken a battering with the lack of foreign currency being brought in by the hotels. In recent months, the rupee has lost nearly 10 per cent of its value as foreign exchange is not coming in while at the same time the government continues to flood the country with Mauritian rupees, including another Rs500 million by the government to try to get the hotels to keep their employees on the payroll, instead of throwing them into technical unemployment. It is self-evident that this situation cannot continue.

One reason that has the hotels worried is that rather than the clarity one would expect from the government in such an unprecedented crisis, all they have seen is contradiction, indecision, and an abrupt cabinet reshuffle. In the middle of the crisis in June, former Minister of Tourism Joe Lesjongard conducted a particularly disastrous press conference where he announced that any tourists coming in when the borders reopen would be stuck between quarantine and their hotel, which would be their gilded cage. Shortly after this horrifying press conference, Lesjongard was swiftly replaced by the more urbane Steven Obeegadoo. Although since then, Obeegadoo has not said much on reopening flights either. With such signals, it isn’t rocket science to see why hotels are biting their nails.

There is another question that remains to be answered. The hotels are hanging on because the Bank of Mauritius announced a six-month moratorium on bank loans that hotels have to repay (while the government pumps the hotel with free money to cover employee costs). That moratorium expires in October. What happens then when hotels have to start repaying the Rs33 billion owed by the sector to banks but the borders are still closed and the hotels are still not making any actual revenue? There are three options, each of them unworkable. First is allowing the hotels to simply go bankrupt which would melt down the economy given the economic reliance on tourism. The second is for the government to print more money, or get the MIC to pump cash in, and essentially pay back what the hotels owe. This would fuel more inflation and weaken the economy still further. Nevermind questions of how public money is being used. The third option is to simply extend the moratorium still further, essentially asking the banks to foot the bill until the hotels get back on their feet. The problem with the third option is one that’s self-inflicted: October is also the month the EU blacklist goes into effect and if Mauritius still finds itself on it, an exodus of offshore companies and their money can be expected. With banks relying on money from the offshore sector for 33 per cent of its deposit base, expecting the banks to take another hit to their books by not collecting on loans to hotels is not much of an option either.

The hotels are angry and with reason. The government has to announce some sort of plan (assuming they have one) of when the borders will reopen. Keeping mum while the economy continues to bleed is not something the government can keep up for much longer.