by Pauline ETIENNE

Minister Sithanen will soon present his new budget. Though he has given no indication on its content, one can be bet that he is in an awkward situation. His silence during the dispute between the private sector and the government might be interpreted as a sign that he is having some difficulty to combine the convictions contained in his latest budget and the so-called ?inconsistencies? of the government since then.

During the conflict ? that tends to be minimised at the moment, as the government has agreed in principle to have discussions with the private sector ? the Joint Economic Council has kept saying that it was happy to see that the budget speech of last year had paved the way for some changes going towards a more liberal economy.

In fact, it was reproaching the fact that the government had not implemented all the reforms announced in that budget. On the contrary, it had back-pedalled in some cases.

As the minister of Finance, Rama Sithanen, was obviously the man behind the so-called aborted reforms, he might have been in a particularly embarrassing situation when he realised that the private sector was thundering against the government for not implementing reforms he had chosen to implement.

As a member of the government, he must have felt particularly annoyed. In the light of such a difficult situation, how free will Rama Sithanen be when he prepares his next budget. As a defender of the liberal economy, he knows the importance of the private sector for the creation of jobs and wealth. He may not want to take the risk of putting the private sector?s back up. At the same time, he is certainly not in a position of putting his cabinet colleagues? backs up. He has already resigned from his post because he felt his colleagues did not support him. How will he behave now that the situation has become even more complicated? If the preparation of the budget appeared complicated last year in view of the difficult economic situation and the external threats hovering over Mauritius, there is no doubt that this year might appear even more difficult for the minister. He will not only have to make sure the population feels it will benefit from the budget measures but he will also have to make sure that he doesn?t offend the two main economic partners. This may be the duty of any minister of Finance every year but, in the present circumstances, his job appears particularly hard. In fact, Rama Sithanen will have to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds?

Fortunately enough, the National Pay Council seems to have got him out of a tight corner with the compensation rate. Employers and trade unionists have managed to compromise on this highly delicate issue and no one really seems unhappy with the rate of the NPC. May Rama Sithanen show that he has the talent of a tightrope walker? It is a matter of economic success for the whole country and the maintenance of social peace!