MCB ‘Lokal is Beautiful‘ study

CONTEXT

Economic leakage and relocation: an opportunity for sustainable prosperity in Mauritius

With strategic support from UTOPIES, the MCB has embarked on an ambitious sustainable development programme, Success Beyond Numbers, built around three pillars: support for a sustainable local economy, conservation and enhancement of the cultural and environmental heritage, and individual and collective well-being.

LOKAL IS BEAUTIFUL is the first concrete action to be launched under the MCB’s first strategic axis, i.e. support for the local economy. Through the Lokal is Beautiful initiative, the MCB wanted to serve the development of Mauritius as effectively as possible by exploring all the facets of a prosperity that could also be thought of more from within, to reinforce the solidity of a dynamic economy anchored in a new globalisation, that of exchanges between prosperous territories.

MISSION

The MCB commissioned UTOPIES to carry out a study aimed at all players in the local economy, with a view to encouraging the emergence of a new generation of local entrepreneurs and rethinking its own offer of support for the local economy, through new forms of partnership, financing, investment and services.

This study has two objectives:

• To raise awareness of the benefits of an import-substitution approach for the island and the role of the local multiplier effect in the prosperity of Mauritius: the territory’s income depends on its ability to capture monetary income from outside and its ability to generate new income by circulating this wealth locally, irrigating the entire local economy through a knock-on effect (‘the multiplier effect’);
• Stimulate local entrepreneurship as a lever for sustainable growth

RESULTS

The study was published and presented to the island’s economic players in January 2019: Lokal is beautiful. Economic leakage and relocation: an opportunity for sustainable prosperity for Mauritius.

The study showed that the attraction of external wealth is an important pillar, necessary but not sufficient to explain and sustainably carry the island’s prosperity. From this perspective, the island’s development must simultaneously consider the capacity of the Mauritian economy to continue to attract external income and to circulate wealth as sustainably as possible within its territory. Two areas of opportunity have been identified for Mauritius:

• Encouraging the response to local needs with local resources, to produce locally what is no longer or not sufficiently produced;
• Increasing the value of what is exported by Mauritius, by generating more revenue on the basis of locally-rooted knowledge and know-how, in particular by making Mauritian production more complex.

Three avenues have been put forward to encourage the emergence of this new form of local entrepreneurship in Mauritius:

• Maker Island – Considering Mauritius as a ‘maker island’ means increasing its capacity to produce what it consumes from local resources (human, material, technical and natural);
• Circular Island – ‘Closing the loop’ of economic and material circuits to create a ‘circular island’ is a formidable source of innovation and wealth creation;
• Smart Island – What if the island’s economic intelligence consisted of creating value rather than products?