MCB Group has supported entrepreneurship and innovation in Mauritius for over 180 years and as a result, has the necessary clout to influence ways to achieve increased prosperity for individuals, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), corporations and the country. But the landscape is no longer the same. Global challenges such as the economic crisis and global warming, added to the digital revolution have sparked a deep questioning of commonly held definitions of prosperity and progress, both at the individual and the collective levels. This systemic reassessment has contributed to MCB Group’s decision to redefine its responsibilities and review its role as an active steward of the island’s economic growth. The thinking led to the exploration of new ways to achieve greater and more sustainable prosperity.

This culminated in a study on the local economy and subsequent report entitled ‘Lokal is Beautiful’, undertaken by the sustainability consulting firm Utopies and launched in January 2019. The idea was to understand how prosperity is achieved in Mauritius and identify the mechanisms that create wealth, including how much of it is generated from local economic circuits. The study confirmed that while attracting external wealth was essential, it was also important to encourage further internal circulation of this external wealth in order to further boost the island’s prosperity. At current levels, Mauritius is able to multiply the revenues captured from abroad by 2.86 times (based on year 2015 figures).

Yet, if the ability to circulate wealth locally is increased, so will the national income. This can be achieved if Mauritius grows and develops further from the inside out. However, as the island’s efforts were focused on leveraging globalisation as a tool for economic development, the local economy has for long not been considered a priority. The idea is not to aim for complete self-reliance or to minimise the importance of the exportation of goods and services or of other pillars such as tourism or international investment, but to reinforce the solidity of Mauritius’ economy by anchoring it in a new kind of globalisation, one of exchanges between more complex economies that produce locally but are still open to world.

The concern, as demonstrated in the study, is that while Mauritius’ external income has registered strong growth on average for the last 20 years, the country’s local multiplier effect has consistently decreased (-25% in 10 years), in a ‘scissor-like effect’. To enable Mauritius to enter the group of high-income countries in a sustainable way, the study recommends increasing external income by 50% and simultaneously increasing the island’s local multiplier effect by 25%, by the year 2025. This scenario leaves the island less exposed to external vulnerability, addressing prosperity in the broadest sense, including social and environmental issues.