Mauritius the investment platform of choice for Mozambique

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mauritius the investment platform of choice for Mozambique

10:40 CAT | 24 Feb 2017

Afrique Inside / Gérard Sanspeur, Chairman of the Board of Investments (BoI) in Mauritius

Mozambique is an indispensable part of Mauritius’s global strategy to promote economic development and growth in Africa, and the reason behind the Mauritius-based Board of Investment and Financial Services Promotion Agency’s (BoIF) B2B workshop for about 30 Mauritius businesses held yesterday in Maputo, which showcased Mauritius as a privileged investment partner and financial and investment platform for foreign multinationals looking to start or expand activities in Mozambique.

“We may have somewhat neglected the importance of bilateral agreements,” Gérard Sanspeur, chairman of the BoIF, admits. While confirming Mauritius’s commitment to regional integration, he emphasized the need to foster more bilateral relations in order to enhance investment and service delivery.

Mauritius has completed nearly 50 bilateral double taxation avoidance agreements, 20 of them with African countries. The country has formalized more than 40 bilateral agreements (23 in Africa) relating to the promotion and protection of investments and reached 30 memoranda of understanding with African countries out of a total of 40 globally.

Since its independence in 1968, Mauritius has experienced a sustainable economic transformation from mono-crop agricultural to a well-diversified economy, to the extent that, thanks to its education and professional training policies, the country is now gradually attaining “high-income country” status.

“However, expertise alone is not enough,” Sanspeur warns. “We also need the natural resources in which continental Africa is so rich, and which reinforce the need for these bilateral trade agreements.” With investors possibly reluctant to register their companies in Africa, Mauritius stands out as an ideal jurisdiction to raise capital for projects in Africa.

Its Africa Centre of Excellence showcases and facilitates investments in Africa through business intelligence and networking. For its part, the Mauritius Africa Fund enjoys government seed capital of MUR 500 million (USD 14 million) as equity financing for viable projects in Africa, while the Enhanced Government-to-Government program enables the setting up of special economic zones in several African countries.

“Mozambique is a key ally of Mauritius in the region,” High Commissioner of Mauritius in Mozambique Jean-Pierre Jhammun insists, recommending his country, where the financial services sector accounts for about 20 percent of the economy, as a partner of choice for raising capital. Whether it be private equity, venture capital or equity funds on the Mauritius Stock Exchange, financing for Mozambican projects comes in highly diversified forms.

One other critical component of Mauritius’s strategy in Africa is private sector involvement. According to the African Development Bank, over 60 private companies are already investing in 25 countries across Africa. In 2014, the Government of Mauritius, through the publicly owned Regional Development Corporation, has leased about 2,456 hectares of land in Mozambique for the development of food security and renewable energy investment projects.

Though Mozambique’s energy potential attracts most of the attention, Mauritius is ideally placed to serve as a springboard for development in other sectors, including technology-based and biotech agriculture, maritime business, manufacturing and high-tech medical services and products.

Regarding the latter, the Mauritius healthcare sector has been transformed into an integrated model underpinned by modern medical facilities, to the extent that, in 2015, more than 16,000 foreign patients travelled to Mauritius for both inpatient and outpatient procedures. “The sector is now shifting gears towards the export of its services and is positioning itself as a medical tourism platform for Africa,” the BoIF chairman explained.

By Levy-Sergio Mutemba