Developmentalism and the Political Economy of Trade Adjustment in Mauritius

Abstract

By any measure, Mauritius must be regarded as one of the most remarkable — and improbable — economic success stories of the post-war period. Mauritius inherited a legacy common to many post-colonial societies of monocrop agriculture, extreme racial inequality, population pressures, unemployment and poverty. At the time of independence from Great Britain in 1968, sugar was responsible for practically all economic activity on the island, accounting for no less than 93 per cent of exports and 94 per cent of all cultivated land (Bowman 1991: 104). By the 1990s, however, Mauritius had undergone a remarkable transformation: while sugar remained an important mainstay of the economy, the island had successfully diversified into manufacturing, luxury tourism, offshore financial services and, most recently, information and communications technology. In the process, it recorded one of the highest sustained rates of economic growth in the world — GDP has grown at 6 per cent per annum more or less uninterrupted since the early 1980s — witnessing a tripling of real income in the process. What is more, this growth record was underpinned by an impressive performance according to a range of broader human development indicators including life expectancy, adult literacy, education and income equality (Kothari and Wilkinson 2013).