Acting quickly and changing strategy are the only way to win

2020 will be a challenging year. Firstly, we are turning the page into a new decade, where we will be faced with faster and ever changing global environment than we have witnessed before which will include the following:

1. deepening of the ecological crisis unless we change our global economic model
2. robotisation and making a lot of people and especially youngsters redundant and hence destroying hope
3. growing political instability in a number of countries leading to people going for nationalism and protectionism
4. global economic growth and GDP growth being questioned as whether they are good benchmarks for prosperity
5. we will see a paradigm shift whereby a number of Governments around the world will find it tough to come up with appropriate long term solutions and might end up in short quick fix leading to increasing populism

Secondly, when it comes to Mauritius, at a macro level we have challenges in every sector of our economy and ever increasing national debt leading to a spiral effect of lower growth (which we have already seen impacting our GDP growth in 2019 which I still believe will end up much lower than previous years, and most probably around 3.6%, despite major public investments). This raises question of whether our Mauritian economy and our private sector are able to create sustainable added value.

Thirdly, at a micro level Mauritians at large will be faced with what type of society they aspire in this decade. Is it one that focuses totally on GDP growth and where we see corruption, crimes becoming a norm of our society or a different type of society which evolves around inclusive growth, sharing equitably, eco-friendly at heart. I do believe, given our size of our population and economy, we have a fantastic opportunity to come up with a different economic model that aspires the world. But for that to happen, we need to break away from our insularity.

In a slow era which will most likely be the norm of this new decade ahead of us and a slowing economy like Mauritius, acknowledging the problem(s), acting quickly and changing strategy are the only way to win.

By Kevin Teeroovengadum
Financial Consultant