Sunday, March 09, 2014

Sithanen Worried About Savings Rate, Again

So he said in an interview in the Mauritius Times about a week ago. It's not the first time he is worried about our savings rate. In 2005 he was worried sick about how much we were setting aside as a country. Just before starting his 'reforms'. It is a fact that over the 15 years before 2005, Mauritius enjoyed a healthy savings rate that averaged more than 26%. But between 2006 and 2010, that is a few years after bean-counting had taken centre stage, our savings rate had collapsed by 7.5% to an average of 17.1%. He didn't seem especially worried about that while he was in the driver seat. But he is now. Isn't that funny?

He's also worried about poverty and inequality. Let's look at how the poor's biggest enemy -- inflation -- behaved during the first few years of Paglanomics: average inflation was 70% higher than what it was under the government that preceded him!


The most recent HBS (Household Budget Surveys) numbers have also confirmed what anyone who understands the effect of reducing top tax rates has on inequality. And yet flattening the tax structure was the biggest plank of the economic mess of Mr. Sithanen. It didn't only make Mauritius more unequal: it also reduced our growth rate significantly.

Structural problems are also on the mind of the former Minister of Finance. Simply hilarious. Looks like he's not aware he created a major structural problem during his second stint as FM.

Finally, Rama Sithanen concludes that we Mauritians vote mostly along ethnic lines as captured by an electoral model he has developed and which he calls... robust. Nothing could be further from the truth. See Ramgoolam dumped Sithanen because he didn't want to stop going to Parliament because the latter's outcomes as FM was simply not marketable. The PM also had to give a 'die-hard Labour' a second mandate as President: SAJ. Plus 18 tickets and big ministries to the Muvman Sinksu Morisyen. Not a lot of ethnic-based thinking going on here if you ask me. But rather Ramgoolam finally waking up to his survival instinct.

Berenger, the father of scientific communalism, did try to frame Sithanen's sacking as ethnic issue. But he didn't give him a ticket knowing full well that having the outgoing FM as a candidate would be very costly electorally. And Berenger lost probably the easiest of all elections.

Sithanen not standing as an independent candidate is also proof that Mauritian voters are quite sophisticated in their ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. Because otherwise he would have stood in riding No 18 and reaped dividends from at least two sources: ethnicity and what he thought was an excellent economic performance.

My own analysis of different general elections has led me to conclude that overall voters have become a lot more mature. I'll tell you more about this later.

© Sanjay Jagatsingh, 2014

2 comments:

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

Tann sa rigolo la ki pe dir:

Et si le comité fait appel à vous pour déposer vos recherches…

Je répondrai présent surtout sur deux aspects : expliquer les subtilités de certaines propositions et tester les modèles pour vérifier leurs conséquences sur notre système de représentation politique.

Ale fer enn zefor pa tro riye.

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

Pu konpran dega ki lin fer pli byen.