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Mauritius Island Hotels |
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Mauritius Island Hotels |
Duty Free in Mauritius
Mauritius has recently declared its resolute plans of becoming the first duty free island in the world. It has presented itself to turn down the sun soaked nation of the Indian Ocean into a shopping paradise. It was since the year 1970, when Mauritius started to take a lead from Taiwan and Hong Kong by launching a tax free zone for all the foreign financiers. This was done in order to set-up jewelry, clothing and textile industries designed at the export market. At present, Mauritius is looking forward towards the countries like Singapore and Dubai for ideas to sparkle its development.
The exciting financial growth which described this island in the 90’s has now slowed down. The main exports like textiles and sugar are coming under tremendous pressure due to the liberalized trade laws and the low international prices. In particular, the textile industry is recently facing a harsh competition as exports from India and China erode its global share market. And therefore, Ramakrishna Sithanen the Finance Minister of Mauritius explains that there is a requirement of annual growth rate of about 7 to 8 percent in order to create jobs and also to tackle the deficit of budget in the island.
On 27th April 2004 Pravin Jugnauth the then Finance Minister came up with an idea of making Mauritius as the duty free island during the 2005/2006 budget session. This idea was to generate an exceptional and an original dynamism in the financial system for the investments and also to take a big step ahead on the path of complete employment growth. At present Mauritius is been visited by atleast 700,000 tourists every year. However, it is quite less compared to the figures issued in 2004, which stated 718, 816 tourists in a year. The estimation for the upcoming year is around 755,000 tourists with the expenditure being estimated up to dollars 880 million.
The customs duty of about 80 percent on imported goods like clothing, jewelry, electronics, sportswear and cosmetics is also been removed since July. And it has also been announced that over the next five years, 1.5 billion dollars of investment will be made in the tourism sector. Deputy Secretary of Mauritius Rajiv Servansingh said that all this process to materialize will obliviously take time; however it will boost the financial activities of the island. There are few in the island who believes that the islands hotel industry, business tourism, financial sector, jewelry sector and the handicraft sector may benefit more from the move towards the duty free idea.
Nevertheless, there is a concern over local manufactures being affected by this move which may drain government reserves of much required tax revenues which is been estimated up to dollars 135 million yearly. Sithanen said that apart from the policy of duty free there will be several measures taken in order to robust the economical growth of the island. Local manufacturers exclaim that there are several risk factors of clearing foreign goods from the countries like South Africa. They think that by removing custom duties on imported goods the Mauritius government has forced foreign competition on them.
