Mauritius - Enhancing and Sustaining Competitiveness : Policy Notes on Trade and Labor

[摘要] Mauritius is a well known successfuldevelopment story. The country's Gross Domestic Product(GDP) per capita rose from 38 percent below the worldaverage in 1981 to 16 percent above the average by 2008.Such a performance is not the fruit of luck or use ofnatural advantages as it was accomplished through man-madeefforts and policy actions. The combination of (i) activeindustrialization policies together with opportunistic useof preferential trade access; and (ii) participatoryinstitutions that assured voice and rent redistributionacross the society ensured labor intensive growth and theemergence of a virtuous cycle in development. Mauritius knewwhat needed to be done. A National Long-Term PerspectiveStudy (NLTPS), also known as Vision 2020, started in 1990and was completed in 1997. The goal of opening up anddiversifying the economy by moving towards high value-added,skill and knowledge intensive service sectors was alreadywell articulated in the study - with explicit reference tothe potential of 'computer services' which todayis embedded in the Information and Communications Technology(ICT) sector. The global crisis in 2008 was a threateningreminder of vulnerabilities. Mauritius is structurallyvulnerable to external shocks. With a small domestic marketunable to promote or sustain production growth by itself anda high dependence on raw materials, food and energy imports,the country is necessarily tied to developments in the worldeconomy. An overarching challenge for Mauritius to achievethe envisaged transformation towards a higher value addedeconomy and sustain economic growth is to improve itsproductivity performance. This report focuses on two keyfundamental instruments for that: (i) trade policy and (ii)labor policy.

[发布日期] 2010-12-03 [发布机构] World Bank

[学科分类] 社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

[关键词] ACCESS TO INFORMATION;ADVANCED ECONOMIES;AGRICULTURE;BALANCE OF PAYMENTS;BARRIER