A budget is a product of the hard work of many fellow Mauritians working in the background for many long hours and this year during the lockdown. At the onset I would like to acknowledge them and recognize their contribution and effort. Only one person however has the responsibility to present this work orally on Budget Day. Critics (or applause) are therefore not directed at any individual in particular nor should they be interpreted as a personal attack.
 
Budget Day in its ceremonial and traditional fashion only exists in a few countries, mostly former British colonies. Honestly, budget speeches in Mauritius are overrated and overhyped. Ten out of 10 times over the last decade it ended in disappointment. Why? Because we, the people either raise our expectations too high and even start hoping for miracles to happen on Budget Day. To me, it sounds more like an annual after sales pitch to convince you to continue believing in the product that you bought so you don’t switch to a competing brand. You may also call it a political PR exercise. In this digital era, do we still have a place for such practice disguised as tradition? We should never forget where we come from, but we should not let it hold us back and drag us down. While watching the PM of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong address his people last week wearing a pink shirt without suit and tie, three words came to my mind – Substance, Authenticity and Pragmatism.
 
Last week’s Budget Day was like listening to the speech of an Engaged Dreamer – one who has great aspirations and is fully engaged in the process but does not really have the ability to achieve these aspirations. Content wise there was a lot of WHAT we want to do but glaringly insufficient of HOW we are going to do it. And in many instances throughout the speech, it felt as if an accountant was trying to sell me ice cream. You get a funny feeling there must be a catch somewhere.
 
The ice cream used the same old Budget mix with a generous dose of popular announcements, a few eye-catching measures, but overall a lot of sugar-coated ideas and concepts which will quickly melt under the sun before we even get a taste of it. Nothing shocking so far as we have been used to lack of depth, character and future thinking from previous budgets. But this time was meant to be different.
 
This year, Budget Day was supposed to be a history-defining moment, a game-changer as we say. It was a Lifetime opportunity to bring profound change in this country and set the foundation for a new path ahead. Finally, we had a pretty good ‘excuse’ to address fundamental issues and bring structural reforms which have hindered our progress for the last 20 years. As it painfully turned out, we are left counting the missed opportunities:
 

• How will we reintegrate the people who will lose their jobs?
• How will we facilitate unlearning, reskilling and upskilling of our displaced workforce?
• How will we address the labour underutilisation or skills mismatch which was impacting 20% of our labour force prior to the pandemic?
• How do we ensure that the unemployment benefits will be used and distributed fairly?
• How can we create a flourishing business climate for SMEs to achieve 55% of GDP?
• How can we develop and promote the Entrepreneurship culture of tomorrow?
• How do we enable and facilitate Industry 5.0 and automation in the Agriculture sector?
• How do we slow down or reverse the brain drain of local talents?
• How do we create a world class public service system which is technology-driven?
• How do we attract foreign investment from Africa?
• How do we attract young talents from Africa?
• How do we become the best in Education, Health, Welfare, etc.?
• How do we become a Digital island?
• How are we going to address the social, economic and environmental dimensions of climate change and become a greener and more sustainable island?

 
Poor execution is our greatest weakness in this country and has been for many years. We all know that there are many reasons behind this, and if we had to single out one of the reasons it points to Mindset. This is probably the biggest missed opportunity of all.

• How do we change this Mindset and shift to a Growth Mindset, a more Global Mindset?
• How and when will our decision makers learn to keep their egos in check and practice servant leadership?

 
The list goes on and on, but I guess you get the point by now.
“Vision without execution is pure hallucination”
There is no point of having great ambitions and aspirations if you do not give yourselves the means to achieve them and walk the talk to make them happen. You will end up with the same old result: just another daydream.