One of the major drives of the Lepep Government is to favour the development of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs); that was the main focus of the 2015-16 Budget of the Finance Minister who reiterated his vision of SMEs becoming the spine of the Mauritian Economy at the opening of MyBiz this week itself. Though there will be no specific SME Bank but the future MauBank shall cater especially for the SMEs if my reading is good.

In this new drive for SMEs, I have been surprised to learn recently that companies -including SMEs- have to disburse 25,000 MUR as ‘security deposit’ and have a non-refundable fee of 50,000 MUR for any case lodged before the Independent Review Panel (IRP)! How many SMEs, especially small companies, can afford 75,000 MUR in their cash-flow to have a case heard before the IRP? I do not know many! Where the application to the IRP relates to the bid opening process or the award of a major contract, the security deposit is 100,000 MUR!

The most scandalous thing is that the sum required before was just 10,000 MUR (or 50% of the bid security, whichever was the higher) and that 750% increase happened in 2013 when the regulations were modified with regards to applications made to the IRP! As that crazy increase was the doing of the former government, will Lepep now review that barrier to access to justice for very small and small companies, especially? Can the authorities, for example, lower the 75,000 MUR to some 25,000 MUR for small companies having less than 10m MUR annual turnover or perhaps restoring it to only 10,000 MUR for very small companies having less than 6m MUR turnover which would tally with the VAT threshold also?

“The most scandalous thing is that the sum required before was just 10,000 MUR.”

Another long overdue issue is the fact that the procurement proceedings in public tenders/bids of less than 1m MUR cannot be challenged at the IRP! We are no legal experts but it would seem that there is a loophole in the legislation where there is no venue to challenge the procurement proceedings for public tenders/ bids of less than 1m MUR –which is quite a sum of money for an SME- besides the Court whereas the IRP provides such facilities for public tenders/bids of more than 1m MUR! Is that not another unfair measure for SMEs which should be the main ones concerned by these ‘small’ tenders/bids?

Last but not least: It is not mandatory for public bodies to inform unsuccessful bidders of the outcome of bids of less than 1m MUR! So following the award of any public tender of less than 1m MUR, the unsuccessful bidders –again mostly SMEs are concerned- are not given any information regarding the award and they do not even know the date of award of the specific tender! Is that not unfair for small bidders?

The authorities should either have the threshold of 1m MUR lowered down to let’s say 100,000 MUR at the IRP for the benefit of SMEs or have another institution where ‘small’ bids under 1m MUR can be challenged besides the Court which is, by the way, a very expensive recourse. Same would apply for the public bodies which should inform the unsuccessful bidders for all bids higher than 100,000 MUR in a spirit of fairness for very small, small and mediumsized Enterprises.