Africa-Press – Mauritius. It is time for action. After presenting his budget in Parliament about a month ago, the minister of Finance, Rama Sithanen, is getting ready to introduce it to the world? and especially to all those interested in investing their money.
On the 2nd of August, minister Sithanen is flying to South Africa. This is the first of a series of trips aimed at searching for foreign direct investment.
Rama Sithanen has made it clear since his arrival at the Finance ministry that the only way of getting out of a difficult situation would be to open the country to foreign expertise and capital.
With this in mind, he introduced a certain number of measures in his budget to make sure investors would no longer feel unwelcome and discouraged, especially if they are bringing money into the country.
The facilitation of the process to obtain permits is among the main measures that should attract investors to Mauritius. During his trips, the minister will advertise new sectors of the economy that have an important potential for growth.
Business process outsourcing, the seafood hub or the integrated resort schemes are among the fields expected to develop in a near future and where strong growth should be achieved quite rapidly.
Good response Thanks to such investment, the minister hopes he will be able to ?create jobs and open access to foreign markets?. But this is not the only objective of his trips abroad.
?We are looking for multilateral and bilateral financing to support the restructuring of the economy,? he confided to l?express.
He asserts that he has already been able to enjoy a positive response from the Europeans during his lobbying visit last week. He will now have to convince the rest of the world that it is worth the effort and money to invest in Mauritius.
After South Africa, the minister of Finance will fly to India where he will most probably put industrial fishing, computer services and the pharmaceutical sector forward.
Then, he also plans lobbying trips to China, South Korea, Malaysia, Dubai, Europe and the United States. However to make sure the minister has a free hand to advertise Mauritius, the finance bill will first have to be voted.
This bill actually contains the main measures of the budget; for them to be implemented and used they first have to become law. The bill has already been studied by the cabinet and will now have to be submitted to Parliament.
But the minister warns that the measures are not expected to change. ?All the political decisions will remain the same. We are simply implementing the decisions of the budget,? he revealed. But the sooner the measures are implemented the better the economic situation will be, guarantees the minister.
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