Because so much of it has been created over the past 10 years. Some people have been getting out of poverty for sure but a lot more have been falling into it. Of the pool of 126,200 poor people in 2012 a staggering 33,000 had joined it over the last decade. That's more than one in every four poor Mauritians. This has happened because our economy has not grown fast enough and whatever wealth was created has not been shared properly.
Massive Policy Failure
Which in turn has mostly been caused by dismal policy-making and the lack of dynamism of our economy. External events have certainly played a role but given that they were beyond our control we shouldn't have spent that much time crying over them. We should also acknowledge the fact that there has been a wide variation in the way poverty has expanded. Chart 1 captures that by looking at how it has progressed over a fifteen-year period. Which coincided roughly with three different governments and in one case with major policy changes.
A Neophyte Freezes Poverty
Period 1 is roughly at the end of the first mandate of Navin Ramgoolam. 500 extra people fell into poverty between two Household Budget Surveys (HBS) bringing the total to 93,200. The tiny 0.5% increase in the number of poor people over a five-year period tells us two things. One is that the combination of progressive taxation, the doubling of pensions and a savings rate worthy of a Tiger provided a good base for progress. Even to a neophyte. By the way it's the government with the best growth and best income distribution of the last twenty years. Bheenick and Bunwaree were Finance Ministers. The other is that given that policy-making wasn't exactly brilliant during Ramgoolam's first term we can safely conclude that it was well within our reach to roll back poverty. At least using that thoughtful base.
