Something has been nagging me since a week. It’s related to the economic decisions facing our country and it’s been triggered by two items I heard/read in the media (radio & print).
– One is the news that the French govt will grant us some significant financial help (around Rs 1 billion) to implement the economic reform (a loan not a donation).
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– The other was an appeal by Jacques de Navacelle, President of the JEC (Joint Economic Council), on a radio to give priority to the sugar industry in the allocation of this financial help.
I can’t help asking myself the following questions:
– Why should the money be allocated to an industry everybody says is no longer going to be a pillar of the Mauritian economy, an industry that has been facing tremendous difficulties (so much so that three factories are getting closed down as already planned)?
– Why should the government help industrialists? Is there not a contradiction in the JEC’s discourse (it seems to be against the principle of social aid as far as the population is concerned but it propones the idea that industry should be helped)?
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– Why not invest instead in sectors that can actually create jobs, wealth and prosperity (a recent study indicated that the seafood hub and the land-based oceanic industries are the most promising for job creation)?
Avi has been arguing that there are many people in Mauritius who are in way or another connected to the sugar industry, that they need to get proper compensations and be helped to convert to another sector.
My estimations (from CSO stats) are that there’s approximately 10% of the labour force related to the sugar industry.
What do you think about this?
The industrialists of the sugar sector are “rent seekers” if I may borrow this expression from Nita Deerpalsing in one of her interviews. The sugar sector wants government grants but as soon as you talk about looking at their accounting books they shout that they are a private company. I think people should know how a sector can afford to grant houses, servants, cars etc. to people who have failed their HSC and act as field overseers, well they call themselves field managers. If you look at the cost structure I’m sure more than 50% of their cost structure goes towards non value added items. My economics teacher called it Managerial Utility, thats the only thing I remember about Economics where owners of companies allocate themselves benefits instead of showing profits and hence pay taxes.
People living around sugar estates have seen so much of the princely lifestyles of the factory administrators that its difficult for us to admit they need help. What they need is transparancy in their management, how they spend every single penny they benefit from negotiated prices.
Unfortunately the press in Mauritius is very quick in defending the sugar industrialists, just see how they’ve been picking on Nita Deerpalsing.
@ Raj
Interesting point of view which I think is shared by many people in Mauritius, at the risk of being slightly if not overtly ‘anti-blancs’
Unfortunately, the rhetorics surrounding this issue tends to revolve around ethno-politics, which clouds our rational thinking abilities. I would like to see more rational thinking that proves to me with figures, forecasts and facts whether it is sensible to invest further in the sugar idustry or not. Either way I’m prepared to accept if facts are given, not opinions/emotions..
It’s true that the Sugar Industry barons have indulged a lot. And so have many other barons in other industry sectors I guess (as well as govt or semi-parastatal institutions).
I don’t know much about Nita Deerpalsing. I’m still figuring her out I guess. I feel that she is intelligent and i can say that much for many of her masculine colleagues. But I sometimes suspect that she is either misunderstood or that she uses some debates to get more popularity…
Christina
As you rightly say these things should be substantiated with figures. We are yet to see a cost breakdown of the sugar estates/factories. On this issue we hear that factories don’t own land and land owners do not own factories though the same people sit on both boards. People will go on being emotional as long as things don’t happen transparently.
I thought all the obsession about tourism and the current intense growth in the tourism industry has been to transfer jobs for people working on the sugar estates to again low skilled jobs in the tourism industry. From a labour perspective the strategy appears to be:
Sugar Industry >>>>> Tourism
low skilled workers >> mixed results
now defunct >>>>>> successful
The sugar industry or the owners of these industries who have a large amount of capital and certainly do not need any loans appear to be successfully transferring their businesses from Sugar to Tourism. The transfer of workers has not followed however.
PS. Microsoft announced today it plans to offer a stripped-down version of Windows, Office and other software for $3 to people in developing nations.
Christina,
I think you’ve asked three good questions. We should not allocate a single rupee to the sugar industry because it’s a sunset industry and as you rightly say there are better bets (those where we will be able to compete internationally) available around. I have written on this issue for some time now — see
http://morisk.blogspot.com/2006/06/no-5-june-2006.html