L’HEBDOMADAIRE ÉLECTRONIQUE GRATUITÉDITION 151 – VENDREDI 23 JUIN 2017 L’HEBDOMADAIRE DIGITAL GRATUIT

The seeds of the next debt crisis

COVID-19

ÉDITION 280 – VENDREDI 06 MARS 2020

Survol de nos importations et nos exportations en chiffre

INSTANCES COMMERCIALES

Les autorités mauric-iennes sont sur le qui-vive. Mercredi, le Premier ministre a lancé un appel à tous

les ministères pour réduire leurs dépenses, donc de « serre ceinture ». D’autres instances ont égale-ment commencé à afficher leurs inquiétudes.

Par exemple, la Mauritius Cham-ber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) a publié un communiqué sur ‘Covid-19 and its impact : rec-ommendations’. Elle rassure ses membres qu’elle suit de près l’im-pact du Covid-19 et leur demande de venir de l’avant aussi tôt que possible en cas de perturbation au niveau de la chaîne d’approvision-nement.

Ensuite, la Banque de Maurice (BoM|) a émis, à son tour, un communiqué sur la surveillance

de l’impact économique du coro-navirus.

« A special cell has been constituted in-house to examine any potential impact on the banking sector and the economy at large. […] The Bank will implement such action as may be appropriate to sup-port the business community and main-tain price stability and promote orderly and balanced economic development. The Bank is also committed to maintain the stability of the financial system so as to ensure sustainable economic growth and economic development », precise-t-elle dans son communiqué.

Nos principales instances com-merciales – pour nos importations - demeurent l’Union européenne, l’Inde à travers le CECPA et la Chine à travers la Free Trade Area à hauteur de Rs 43 milliards, Rs 35 milliards et Rs 31.7 milliards re-spectivement. [Voir tableau com-plet]

Survol de nos importations et nos exportations en chiffre

INSTANCES COMMERCIALES

VENDREDI 06 MARS 2020 | BIZWEEK | ÉDITION 280

LA TOUR3

Ils sont presque tous unanimes à le concéder : le coronavirus, ou le Covid-19, aura un sérieux impact sur notre économie. Certaines autorités évoquent même un effet sur nos importations. Si au début on parlait beaucoup de la Chine, là où le virus a commencé à se propager, ce dernier atteint peu à peu d’autres pays telle l’Italie et la

France. On risque davantage d’être impacté car la Chine ne représente pas notre unique source d’importations

INSTANCE COMMERCIALE EXPORTATIONS (Rs) IMPORTATIONS (Rs)

African Growth and Opportunity Act AGOA (États-Unis)

8 milliards

4.6 milliards

EU-iEPA (EU - interim Economic Partnership Agreement)

28,9 milliards

43,4 milliards

SADC (Southern African Development Community)

1,3 milliards

5 milliards

COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa)

7,9 milliards

5,2 milliards

Turkey

24 millions

2,6 milliards

Pakistan

21 millions

763 millions

AfCFTA (African Continental Free Trade Area)

15,8 milliards

25 milliards

Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and Partnership Agreement (CECPA) with India

896 millions

35,1 milliards

Free Trade Area with China

1,1 milliard

31,7 milliards

Des chiffres fournis par la Mauritius Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI)

The shock that coronavirus has wrought on markets across the world coincides with a dan-gerous financial backdrop marked by spiralling global debt. According to the Institute of In-ternational Finance, a trade group, the ratio of

global debt to gross domestic product hit an all-time high of over 322 per cent in the third quarter of 2019, with total debt reaching close to $253tn. The implication, if the virus continues to spread, is that any fragilities in the financial sys-tem have the potential to trigger a new debt crisis.

In the short term the behaviour of credit markets will be critical. Despite the decline in bond yields and borrowing costs since the markets took fright, financial conditions have tightened for weaker corporate borrowers. Their access to bond markets has become more difficult. After Tuesday’s 50 basis-point cut, the US Federal Reserve’s policy rate of 1.0-1.5 per cent is still higher than the 0.8 per cent yield on the policy-sensitive two-year Treasury note. This inversion of the yield curve could intensify the squeeze, says Charles Dumas, chief economist of TS Lombard, if US banks now tighten credit while lending has become less profitable.

This is particularly important because much of the debt build-up since the global financial crisis of 2007-08 has been in the non-bank corporate sector where the current disrup-tion to supply chains and reduced global growth imply lower earnings and greater difficulty in servicing debt. In effect, the coronavirus raises the extraordinary prospect of a credit crunch in a world of ultra-low and negative interest rates.

Policymakers in advanced countries have over the past week made clear their readiness to pursue an active fiscal and monetary response to the disruption caused by the vi-rus. Yet such policy activism carries a longer-term risk of entrenching the dysfunctional monetary policy that contrib-uted to the original financial crisis, as well as exacerbating the dangerous debt overhang that the global economy now faces.

The risks have been building in the financial system for decades. From the late 1980s, central banks — and especial-ly the Fed — conducted what came to be known as “asym-metric monetary policy”, whereby they supported markets when they plunged but failed to damp them down when they were prone to bubbles. Excessive risk taking in bank-ing was the natural consequence.

The central banks’ quantitative easing since the crisis, which involves the purchase of government bonds and other assets, is, in effect, a continuation of this asymmetric approach. The resulting safety net placed under the banking system is unprecedented in scale and duration. Continuing loose policy has brought forward debt financed private ex-penditure, thereby elongating an already protracted cycle in which extraordinary low or negative interest rates appear to be less and less effective in stimulating demand.

William White, who while head of the monetary and economics department at the Bank for International Set-tlements in Basel was one of the few economists to predict the financial crisis, says the subsequent great experiment in ultra-loose monetary policy is intensely morally hazardous.

This, he argues, is because unconventional central bank pol-icies may “simply set the stage for the next boom and bust cycle, fuelled by ever declining credit standards and ever ex-panding debt accumulation”.

A comparison of today’s circumstances with the peri-od before the financial crisis is instructive. As well as a big post-crisis increase in government debt, an important dif-

The seeds of the next debt crisis

COVID-19

Cont’d on page 5

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ACTA PUBLICA4

With debt levels already at a record high, coronavirus raises the risk of a credit crunch in a world of low interest rates

Policymakers in advanced countries have over the past week made clear their readiness to pursue an active fiscal and monetary response to the disruption caused by the virus. Yet such policy activism carries a longer-term risk of entrenching the dysfunctional monetary policy that contributed to the original financial crisis, as well as exacerbating the dangerous debt overhang that the global economy now faces.

The risks have been building in the financial system for decades. From the late 1980s, central banks — and especially the Fed — conducted what came to be known as “asymmetric monetary policy”, whereby they supported markets when they plunged but failed to damp them down when they were prone to bubbles. Excessive risk taking in banking was the natural consequence.

The central banks’ quantitative easing since the crisis, which involves the purchase of government bonds and other assets, is, in effect, a continuation of this asymmetric approach. The resulting safety net placed under the banking system is unprecedented in scale and duration. Continuing loose policy has brought forward debt financed private expenditure,

VENDREDI 06 MARS 2020 | BIZWEEK | ÉDITION 280

ACTA PUBLICA5

ference now is that the debt focus in the private sector is not on property and mortgage lending, but on loans to the corporate sector. A recent OECD report says that at the end of December 2019 the global outstanding stock of non-fi-nancial corporate bonds reached an all-time high of $13.5tn, double the level in real terms against December 2008.

The rise is most striking in the US, where the Fed esti-mates that corporate debt has risen from $3.3tn before the financial crisis to $6.5tn last year.

Given that Google parent Alphabet, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft alone held net cash at the end of last year of $328bn, this suggests that much of the debt is concentrat-ed in old economy sectors where many companies are less cash generative than Big Tech. Debt servicing is thus more burdensome.

The shift to corporate indebtedness is in one sense less risky for the financial system than the earlier surge in sub-prime mortgage borrowing because banks, which by their nature are fragile because they borrow short and lend long, are not as heavily exposed to corporate debt as investors, such as insurance companies, pension funds, mutual funds and exchange traded funds.

That said, banks cannot escape the consequences of a wider collapse in markets in the event of a continued loss of investor confidence and or a rise in interest rates from today’s extraordinary low levels. Such an outcome would lead to increased defaults on banks’ loans together with shrinkage in the value of collateral in the banking system. And asset prices could be vulnerable even after the corona-virus scare because the central banks’ asset purchases drove investors to search for yield regardless of the dangers. As a result, risk is still systematically mispriced around the fi-nancial system.

The OECD report notes that compared with previous credit cycles today’s stock of corporate bonds has lower overall credit quality, longer maturities, inferior covenant protection — bondholder rights such as restrictions on fu-ture borrowing or dividend payments — and higher payback requirements. Longer maturities are associated with high-er price sensitivity to changes in interest rates, so together with declining credit quality that makes bond markets more sensitive to changes in monetary policy. Current market volatility is further exacerbated by banks’ withdrawal from market-making activities in response to tougher capital ade-quacy requirements since the crisis.

In a downturn, some of the disproportionately large re-cent issuance of BBB bonds — the lowest investment grade category — could end up being downgraded. That would lead to big increases in borrowing costs because many inves-tors are constrained by regulation or self-imposed restric-tions from investing in non-investment grade bonds.

The deterioration in bond quality is particularly striking in the $1.3tn global market for leveraged loans, which are loans arranged by syndicates of banks to companies that are heavily indebted or have weak credit ratings. Such loans are called leveraged because the ratio of the borrower’s debt to assets or earnings is well above industry norms. New issu-ance in this sector hit a record $788bn in 2017, higher than the peak of $762bn before the crisis. The US accounted for $564bn of that total.

Much of this debt has financed mergers and acquisitions and stock buybacks. Executives have a powerful incentive to engage in buybacks despite very full valuations in the equity market because they boost earnings per share by shrinking the company’s equity capital and thus inflate performance related pay. Yet this financial engineering is a recipe for sys-tematically weakening corporate balance sheets.

Otmar Issing, former chief economist of the European Central Bank, says prolonged low central bank interest rates also have wider consequences because they lead to a seri-ous misallocation of capital. This helps keep unproductive “zombie” banks and companies — those that cannot meet interest payments from earnings — alive. The IMF’s latest global financial stability report amplifies this point with a simulation showing that a recession half as severe as 2009 would result in companies with $19tn of outstanding debt having insufficient profits to service that debt.

Overall, this huge accumulation of corporate debt of in-creasingly poor quality is likely to exacerbate the next reces-sion. The central banks’ ultra-loose monetary policy has also fostered what economists call disaster myopia — compla-cency, in a word, which is a prerequisite of financial crises. The greatest complacency today is over inflation and the possibility that central banks will inflict a financial shock by raising interest rates sooner than most expect.

This myopia is understandable and not just because of the coronavirus. Since the financial crisis the debt laden advanced economies have suffered from deficient demand. Hence the central banks’ recent difficulties in meeting in-flation targets. At the same time tightening labour markets have not led to increased wage inflation, leading many econ-omists to assume the traditional relationship between falling unemployment and rising price inflation has broken down.

Clearly there is still a deflationary impulse at work in the global economy, causing growth to be both anaemic and debt dependent. Yet inflation may not be quiescent for as long as markets assume. One reason is that with the central banks’ unconventional measures becoming less effective, there is a pressing question about how to respond to stag-nation when interest rates are close to zero, together with a growing consensus, helped by coronavirus, that a more activist fiscal policy may be necessary.

With the rise of populism there are growing calls for monetary finance of increased fiscal deficits — that is, di-rect financing of government deficits by central banks of the kind currently happening in Japan. Monetary finance has been a precursor of high inflation and while its proponents argue that the risks can be contained provided the quantity of such finance is controlled by independent central banks, central bank independence has been increasingly under

threat since the crisis.

Demography is also relevant. Charles Goodhart of the London School of Economics and Philipp Erfurth of Mor-gan Stanley have argued that low and negative interest rates are not the new normal because the world is on the cusp of a dramatic demographic shift. A decline in the working pop-ulation relative to the retired population potentially returns bargaining power to labour. Combined with a decline in household savings because elderly populations have become less thrifty, they say, this makes it almost inevitable that real interest rates will reverse trend and go back up.

Nor, in the shorter term, is it clear that the relationship between unemployment and wage inflation has really bro-ken. Chris Watling, founder of Longview Economics, says the sogginess of wage data in the US is substantially to do with the oil-producing states, which suffered a marked slow-down last year as a result of the fall in crude prices in late 2018. Non-oil wage inflation has remained in a relatively ro-bust uptrend as unemployment rates have fallen.

A pressing question, in the light of the debt build-up, is whether the regulatory response to the great financial cri-sis has been sufficient to rule out another systemic crisis and whether the increase in banks’ capital will provide an adequate buffer against the losses that will result from wide-spread mispricing of risk.

History matters here. The one period in the last 200 years when banking was relatively free of crises was between the 1930s and early 1970s. This was because the regulatory re-sponse to the 1929 crash and the subsequent banking fail-ures was so draconian that banking was turned into a low-risk, utility-like business. It was the progressive removal of this regulatory straitjacket, which began in the 1970s, that paved the way for the property based crises of the mid-1970s, the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, more property based crises of the early 1990s and the rest.

While there has been a plethora of reforms since 2008 — though conspicuously not including the removal of the privileged tax status of debt relative to equity — the opera-tions of the likes of Goldman Sachs, Barclays or Deutsche Bank could scarcely be called utility-like. And when very rapid changes in financial structure are taking place, as today, regulators are often left behind by the new reality and wrong footed by regulatory arbitrage.

It is impossible to predict the trigger or timing of a fi-nancial crisis. And it seems unlikely that a full-blown crisis is imminent, notwithstanding coronavirus. But the poten-tially unsustainable accumulation of public sector debt and of debt in the non-financial corporate sector highlights se-rious vulnerabilities, notably in China and other emerging markets, but also in the US and UK. And the continental European banking system is conspicuously weaker than that of the US.

Against such a background, the conclusion has to be that of the late Herb Stein, the American economist who re-marked that if something can’t go on for ever, then it will stop. When coronavirus is long gone, that will be when sys-temic trouble starts.

JOHN PLENDERFinancial Times 4 March 2020

The shift to corporate indebtedness is in one sense less risky for the financial system than the earlier surge in subprime mortgage borrowing because banks, which by their nature are fragile because they borrow short and lend long, are not as heavily exposed to corporate debt as investors, such as insurance companies, pension funds, mutual funds and exchange traded funds.

That said, banks cannot escape the consequences of a wider collapse in markets in the event of a continued loss of investor confidence and or a rise in interest rates from today’s extraordinary low levels. Such an outcome would lead to increased defaults on banks’ loans together with shrinkage in the value of collateral in the banking system. And asset prices could be vulnerable even after the coronavirus scare because the central banks’ asset purchases drove investors to search for yield regardless of the dangers. As a result, risk is still systematically mispriced around the financial system.

The OECD report notes that compared with previous credit cycles today’s stock of corporate bonds has lower overall credit quality, longer maturities, inferior covenant protection —

Otmar Issing, former chief economist of the European Central Bank, says prolonged low central bank interest rates also have wider consequences because they lead to a serious misallocation of capital. This helps keep unproductive “zombie” banks and companies — those that cannot meet interest payments from earnings — alive. The IMF’s latest global financial stability report amplifies this point with a simulation showing that a recession half as severe as 2009 would result in companies with $19tn of outstanding debt having insufficient profits to service that debt.

Overall, this huge accumulation of corporate debt of increasingly poor quality is likely to exacerbate the next recession. The central banks’ ultra-loose monetary policy has also fostered what economists call disaster myopia — complacency, in a word, which is a prerequisite of financial crises. The greatest complacency today is over inflation and the possibility that central banks will inflict a financial shock by raising interest rates sooner than most expect.

This myopia is understandable and not just because of the coronavirus. Since the financial crisis the debt laden advanced economies have suffered from deficient demand. Hence the central banks’ recent difficulties in meeting inflation targets. At the same time tightening labour markets have not led to increased wage inflation, leading many economists to assume the

traditional relationship between falling unemployment and rising price inflation has broken down.

Clearly there is still a deflationary impulse at work in the global economy, causing growth to be both anaemic and debt dependent. Yet inflation may not be quiescent for as long as markets assume. One reason is that with the central banks’ unconventional measures becoming less effective, there is a pressing question about how to respond to stagnation when interest rates are close to zero, together with a growing consensus, helped by coronavirus, that a more activist fiscal policy may be necessary.

With the rise of populism there are growing calls for monetary finance of increased fiscal deficits — that is, direct financing of government deficits by central banks of the kind currently happening in Japan. Monetary finance has been a precursor of high inflation and while its proponents argue that the risks can be contained provided the quantity of such finance is controlled by independent central banks, central bank independence has been increasingly under threat since the crisis.

What We Know and What We Can Do

POTENTIAL IMPACT OF THE CORONAVIRUS EPIDEMIC

We know that the disease is spreading quickly. With over one-third of our membership affected directly, this is no longer a regional issue—it is a

global problem calling for a global response.We also know that it will eventually retreat, but

we don’t know how fast this will happen.We know that this shock is somewhat unusual

as it affects significant elements of both supply and demand:• Supply will be disrupted due to morbidity and

mortality, but also the containment efforts that restrict mobility and higher costs of doing business due to restricted supply chains and a tightening of credit.

• Demand will also fall due to higher uncertainty, increased precautionary behaviour, containment efforts, and rising financial costs that reduce the ability to spend.

• These effects will spill over across borders.Experience suggests that about one-third of

the economic losses from the disease will be direct costs: from loss of life, workplace closures, and quarantines. The remaining two-thirds will be indirect, reflecting a retrenchment in consumer confidence and business behaviour and a tighten-ing in financial markets.

The good news is that financial systems are more resilient than before the Global Financial Crisis. However, our biggest challenge right now is handling uncertainty.

Under any scenario, global growth in 2020 will drop below last year’s level. How far it will fall,

and for how long, is difficult to predict, and would depend on the epidemic, but also on the timeliness and effectiveness of our actions.

This is particularly challenging for countries with weaker health systems and response capaci-ty—calling for a global coordination mechanism to accelerate the recovery of demand and supply.

How to Respond at the Country Level

The number one priority in terms of fiscal response is ensuring front-line health-related spending to protect people’s wellbeing, take care of the sick, and slow the spread of the virus. I can’t emphasize enough the urgency of stepping up health-related measures—and the need to ensure the production of medical supplies so that supply is at par with demand.

Second, macro-financial policy actions may be required to tackle the supply and demand shocks that I mentioned above. The aim should “no re-gret” actions that shorten and soften the economic impact. They should be timely and targeted to the sectors, businesses, and households hardest hit.

A generalized weakening in demand through confidence and spillover channels—including trade and tourism, commodity prices, and tighter financial conditions—would call for an additional policy response to support demand and ensure an adequate supply of credit.

Third, adequate liquidity will also be needed to offset financial stability risks.

In short, the situation is evolving rapidly and we

should stand ready to provide a more forceful, co-ordinated response if conditions require it. Along these lines, I welcome the statement from the G7 yesterday that they are ready to cooperate further on timely and effective measures.

How the Fund Can HelpFor our part, the Fund is ready to help its

membership. The IMF is making available about $50 billion through its rapid-disbursing emergency financing facilities for low-income and emerging market countries that could potentially seek sup-port. Of this, $10 billion is available at zero interest for the poorest members through the Rapid Credit Facility.

There are many members at risk, including those with weak health systems, inadequate policy space, commodity exporters exposed to terms-of-trade shocks, and others that are particularly vulnerable to spillovers.

I am particularly concerned about our low-in-come and more vulnerable members—these coun-tries may see financing needs rise rapidly as the economic and human cost of the virus escalates.

Our staff are currently working on identifying vulnerable countries and estimating potential financing needs should the situation deteriorate further.

The Fund has resources available to support the membership:• Thankstothegenerosityof ourshare-holders,wehaveabout$1trillioninover-alllendingcapacity.

• Forlow-incomecountries,wehaverap-id-disbursingemergencyfinancingof upto$10billion(50percentof quotaof eligi-blemembers)thatcanbeaccessedwithoutafull-fledgedIMFprogram.

• OthermemberscanaccessemergencyfinancingthroughtheRapidFinancingInstrument.Thisfacilitycouldprovideabout$40billionforemergingmarketsthatcouldpotentiallyapproachusforfinancialsupport.

• WealsohavetheCatastropheContain-mentandRelief Trust—theCCRT—whichprovideseligiblecountrieswithup-frontgrantsforrelief onIMFdebtser-vicefallingdue.TheCCRTprovedtobeeffectiveduringthe2014Ebolaoutbreak,butisnowunderfundedwithjustover$200millionavailableagainstpossibleneedsof over$1billion.Icalledonmembercountriestohelpensurethatthisfacilityisfullyre-chargedandreadyforthecurrentcrisis.The Fund is fully committed to supporting our

member countries, particularly the most vulnera-ble; we have the tools to help; and we are coordi-nating closely with our partner institutions.

We all recognize that the situation with the spread of the coronavirus is very serious and could well get worse. This affects us all. Let me start with what we know and what we don’t yet know about the coronavirus and then how the global community can support those affected by this crisis in an effective and coordinated way

VENDREDI 06 MARS 2020 | BIZWEEK | ÉDITION 280

POST SCRIPTUM6

Kristalina GeorgievaManaging Director

International Mone-tary Fund

04 March 2020

DEBRIEF7

«Depuis sa création, la MCCI a joué un rôle prépondérant dans la

croissance économique et la prospérité de Maurice. Elle a permis de trouver des solutions auprès de tous les acteurs économiques, aussi bien du secteur public que du secteur privé, tout en forgeant des partenariats solides avec eux », a sou-tenu Marday Venkatasamy, prési-dent de la MCCI.

De son côté, le Premier minis-tre a profité de cette occasion pour présenter sa vision économique pour les cinq prochaines années aux membres de la communauté

des affaires. « Pour les cinq années à venir, le gouvernement a pour but de fa-ciliter les démarches pour les entreprises. Il existe de nouvelles possibilités pour le monde des affaires à Maurice, notam-ment grâce à l’émergence de nouveaux secteurs d’activité, tels que la FinTech et l’intelligence artificielle, de même que le soutien qu’il est nécessaire d’apporter aux industries existantes », a-t-il af-firmé.

La digitalisation sera l’un des dossiers prioritaires pour la MCCI. La Chambre, à travers une série de mesures et une action soutenue, s’engage à accompagner l’évolu-

tion de l’industrie vers les nouvelles technologies. L’objectif est de per-mettre aux entreprises d’adopter les nouveaux outils numériques afin d’améliorer leur fonctionne-ment et, in fine, dynamiser leur croissance. L’idée est d’aider les compagnies à profiter de nouvelles possibilités, telles que le paiement et le marketing en ligne. Cela per-mettra également une meilleure mise en réseau de toutes les parties concernées, tout en leur donnant accès à de nouveaux marchés pour la commercialisation de leurs pro-duits et services.

La digitalisation, un des dossiers prioritaires

pour la MCCI

170E ANNIVERSAIREKanuhura Maldives awarded ‘Global Best Employer Brand Award’

Kanuhura Maldives has been awarded the “Global Best Employ-er Brand Award” by Employer Branding Institute. This now re-nowned institution features the Top Organisations who are exem-plary and used marketing communications effectively for Human Resources Development & Hospitality Industries. The Sun Resorts property in Maldives is the only Resort in the Maldives receiving this award. Kanuhura Maldives was selected for its hospitality strategy, diversified cultures, employee Benefits & engagement and equal opportunities to women leaders. This award has been con-ferred to Top Ten hotels in entire Asia during a Ceremony in Mum-bai on 16th February.

TEAM B of UoM named winner of local CFA Institute Research Chal-lenge

CFA Society Mauritius announced this week that University of Mauritius - Team B has won the local round of the 2020 CFA In-stitute Research Challenge and will advance to the Regional com-petition in Dead Sea Area, Jordan, where they will face other uni-versities from across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Winning team members, including Anshika Soobban, Aïsha Aqeelah Elahee, Hemavathee Manick, Mohammad Nayaz Rojid and Rovena Choy-tah, presented their analysis and buy/sell/hold recommendation on MCB Group Ltd to a panel of distinguished judges from the in-vestment community, including Krishen Patten, CFA, (Chief Risk Officer of Axys Investment Partners), Michael Ng Thow Hing, CFA, (former Chief Investment Officer, Deputy CEO and Head of Asset Management) and Philippe Koch, CFA (Managing Partner of Miltenberg Capital Ltd).

Les Promenades d’Helvetia accueille ses premiers propriétaires

Les premiers propriétaires ayant fait l’acquisition d’apparte-ments aux Promenades d’Helvetia ont pris possession de leurs clés le mois dernier. Un moment qui restera gravé dans les mémoires : à ce jour, c’est en effet la seule Smart City de l’île Maurice à avoir livré ses premiers biens immobiliers. D’autres blocs d’appartements sont en ce moment en construction, avec de nouvelles livraisons prévues au mois de juin. Ce nouveau volet du développement des Prome-nades d’Helvétia compte un total de 33 unités, dont des studios, appartements et penthouses. Il offre aux résidents un maximum de pièces tournées vers le nord et un accès piétonnier direct sur la Promenade. Le développement conserve l’élégance architecturale caractéristique d’Helvetia, rappelant les toitures inclinées et les lignes épurées des charmantes demeures mokassiennes.

Opération endovasculaire réussie de l’anévrisme aortique (EVAR) par une équipe 100 % mauricienne

C’est une première à Maurice. Une équipe médicale, dirigée par le Dr Kunal Sibartie, a réalisé la première opération endovasculaire d’un anévrisme aortique, et ce, sans la contribution de médecins étrangers. Cette intervention chirurgicale de pointe s’est déroulée à la Clinique Darné, à Floréal, le 24 janvier 2020. C-Care, filiale de CIEL Healthcare et propriétaire de Clinique Darné et Wellkin Hospital, confirme ainsi son positionnement comme un pôle d’ex-cellence médical dans l’Océan Indien. Pour cette intervention, les médecins ont utilisé la chirurgie endovasculaire. Mini-invasive et innovante, elle consiste à passer par les artères fémorales, par le bi-ais d’une incision faite au niveau du pli de l’aine. Le chirurgien est alors en mesure, à travers les vaisseaux, de traiter la partie affectée de l’aorte par la pose d’une endoprothèse vasculaire, c’est-à-dire un stent recouvert d’un tissu synthétique.

C’est une nouvelle ère qui s’ouvre pour la Mauritius Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI). L’institution, porte-parole de la communauté des affaires mauriciennes, a célébré

son 170e anniversaire le 25 janvier 2020. L‘institution a saisi cette occasion pour présenter les chantiers prioritaires sur lesquels se focalisera son engagement, notamment la digitalisation

des activités économiques

The Competition Commission announced, on 4 March, the ap-pointment of Mahmad Aleem Bo-cus as its Chairperson with effect from 25 February. Mr Bocus has been appointed by the President of the Republic of Mauritius on the advice of the Prime Minister given after consultation with the Lead-er of the Opposition pursuant to Section 7 (1) of the Competition Act 2007. Mr Bocus is a Barrister at Law currently in private practice. Prior to joining the Competition Commission, Mr Bocus was the

Chairperson of the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (ICTA) and Board Mem-ber of the Independent Broadcast-ing Authority from March 2017 to October 2019. He was the Direc-tor of Legal Affairs/ Board Sec-retary of ICTA between August 2002 and January 2006. Mr Bocus had previously served as a District Magistrate /Senior District Magis-trate in Mauritius and visiting Dis-trict Magistrate in Rodrigues. He had also acted as Temporary State Counsel.

Mahmad Aleem Bocus appointed Chairperson of the Competition Commission

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