Mauritius International Financial Centre: This time is different?

Mauritius is at the cornerstone of significant changes domestically and internationally. Since 2 years, the country experienced a change in government, a major financial scandal, uncertainty on the double tax agreement with India, and a slowing down of overall productive activity. As I write this paper, the Honourable Minister of Financial Services is on the forefront explaining the accord which has been signed with India, which will comprise a sharing of taxation on capital gains from 2017 till 2019. India offered as grant around Rs 12.7 Billion to help Mauritius to grow its financial sector and its economy at large.  Much of the political and economic debate is about the future development of Mauritius, which from what I can understand will gravitate around smart cities, the transformational change of the financial sector, the port and the marine economy. Whether these reforms will work or not will depend on the attractiveness (rate of return) of the country and how adaptable Mauritius will be in view of these changes. This paper will underline the main opportunities/difficulties Mauritius will face in developing its financial centre and how important it is to adopt an extremely open strategy towards the core parameters of this sector.

Davin Appanah studied in Paris. He worked as a Quant/Structurer/Trader on Interest Rate and Exotic Derivatives within the investment banking sector for more than 10 years in Paris and some time in New York.  His areas of interests are financial mathematics modelling, interest rate derivatives, quantitative hedge fund strategies, Python and MATLAB, market microstructure and financial microeconomics.

L'Express