Bean-Counter Who Broke the Economy Says He Understands How it Works

Tram Will Cut Down

Road Fatalities By 20%. Really?

That was on a radio program in the second quarter of 2017 when Sithanen argued against the Lepep tram while Chung defended it. Chung, a senior advisor at the PMO at the time, predicted that the introduction of the tram would slow down the growth of the car pool and reduce road fatalities by 10%-20% every year (save 20-30 lives) which he claimed happened everywhere in the world. Flyovers and a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) were not options for him.

Lepep Should Shift From TINA to TAMBO

TAMBO stands for There Are Much Better Options. It's an acronym I coined back in 2007 when Dr. TINAnen was busy breaking the economy with his flat tax. It essentially demonstrated that there were more useful things to do than to turn back the clock of social progress between never-ending stories of gato-pima and savat leponz. Like considering several good options and picking the best. Feasible if you're not endowed with a reverse Midas touch.

Spreadsheet Nirvana

The decision of going ahead with the Lepep tram is afflicted with the same There Is No Alternative disease and doesn't address the No. 1 problem of our transportation policy: the growth of private cars has been left unchecked for way too long. On April 1, Georges Chung was heard saying that there were no alternatives to the tram. Isn't that a jurassic comment? And a couple of days ago he seemed to be in a state of total bliss while standing in front of a spreadsheet of the project – we were also told that half-a-dozen accountants did not take up his challenge of finding faults in it – that has been presented literally as having no risk. But he doesn't want to share it with the media.

Mauritius Doesn't Need the Metro Express to Go Bankrupt

Because the Sithanen flat tax has been taking care of that. In quite a splendid manner actually. As we've pointed out recently the associated toohrooh has already reached a trillion rupees. Which is equivalent to several years of GDP. Anybody who has studied up to at least Form III understands that continually growing at less than 4% -- that too in depreciated rupee terms -- instead of the 8% you promised will land you in very deep trouble pretty quickly.

We've seen our PM make a surprising visit to India before presenting his budget. The implementation rate in the public sector has slowed down. If the Metro Leger has been replaced by a watered-down version it's not because we have so much money that we don't know what to do with it. A special purpose vehicle has appeared and the debt ceiling will be amended. What do all these signs tell us?