Big Cousin Moody’s was a distant relative we hardly knew. We knew he paid a yearly visit to the village chiefs, discussed some matters with them and gave them a parting gift. Or deprived them of one and asked them instead to behave themselves otherwise he would be very upset.

This year, however, Big Cousin was invited right into our kitchens and living rooms and suddenly became a household name. The reason is very simple. He came during an electoral campaign. Yes, it is only a campaign for local government but since we care so little about local issues, our vote will be either a pat on the government’s shoulder for doing well or a kick in its butt for messing up.

So the minister of finance was the first to brandish our moody cousin’s report as a measure of how successful this government has been, particularly in its handling of the British American Investment saga and for “cleaning up the country for new investment”, for which it was apparently congratulated. “The report should be hung on our wall,” the minister said.

The leader of the opposition was quick to refute this, going as far as saying that Moody’s report is, instead, a slap in the government’s face, while the Labour Party’s Arvin Boolell said that “the message was harsh, loud and clear”.

The report, in fact, is neither to be hung on the finance minister’s wall nor flushed down the toilet. Nor is it only about the performance of this government. But let’s first get rid of the fallacy that Moody’s showered anyone with praise for their handling of what it called “the BAI problem”. It did not. What it said is that “details of the problems have yet to be disclosed” and that “we expect that the authorities will disclose more information within the next few months”. In other words, our moody relative does not know enough about the problem to comment on it, let alone praise anyone for the way it was handled.

There is more: while Moody’s thinks the “decision to bail-out depositors and policyholders had the advantage of being swiftly implemented, avoiding panic behaviours and a deposit run,” it does mention that the decision equally “carries the disadvantage of increasing the risk of moral hazard”. Google ‘moral hazard’ and this is what you will find: Moral hazard occurs when one person takes more risks because someone else bears the burden of those risks.

Having said that, according to our distant relative, our economy is fine thank you as “over the last five years, the net financial inflows have been systematically positive”, our debt situation is not so bad and the outlook is by and large good due to “the fall in global energy prices”.

As far as the fight against poverty is concerned, Moody’s points out that “in 2012, the authorities launched the Social Registry of Mauritius… to better target the beneficiaries (previously based on ad-hoc assessments) and to better manage those programmes in an integrated manner.”

The only bad news our cousin brought is not really news: the 5.7% growth forecast by the minister of finance is not likely to happen. “Our real growth forecasts for 2015 and 2016,” Moody says, “are 3.6%”. But then again, which economist didn’t know that?

And our cousin leaves us with the challenge of being able to maintain our “attractive investment environment” to avoid the risk “that financial inflows stop suddenly”.

So goodbye, Cousin, and we suggest you choose your timing better next year.