Budget Day – Renganaden Padayachy: “I am calm and confident”

The Grand Oral of the Minister of Finance as part of the presentation of the 2024-25 Budget should be carried out in the language of Shakespeare. However, some of the measures will be announced in French.

Renganaden Padayachy is preparing to present his 5th and final Budget for the current mandate. This is particularly anticipated while the electoral context is looming. The Chief Financial Officer made it clear that the measures in the 2024-25 Budget were formulated to boost social resilience, the economy and the environment.

In a few hours, the Budget will be presented above all in a context where the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts growth of 4.9% and an inflation rate of 4.9% for Mauritius in 2024. The public debt of Mauritius amounted to Rs 524 billion in March 2024 and an unemployment rate of 6.3% in 2023.

24 hours before the budget presentation, Renganaden Padayachy stressed to a few journalists that he was “serene and confident”. He argued that a long way had been covered. The premises of his ministry were open to the press on June 6 for a guided tour whose idea was to demonstrate the latest preparations underway. We made it clear that the Minister of Finance was systematically in the oven and at the mill for the preparation of the 2024-25 Budget. “We are finalizing the last measures. The minister is still at work and there is a lot of rigor,” we told the press.

Volume

The 2024-25 Budget will be in line with the government, where the emphasis will be placed on people. “This is the philosophy that has been promoted by this government which has constantly aimed to reduce inequalities in the country,” maintains a close collaborator of the Minister of Finance. The Grand Oral will be performed in English while part of the measures will be presented in the language of Molière. In terms of volume, the Ministry of Finance maintains that the 2024-25 Budget will not be different from previous documents. The measures of the 2023-24 Budget – which was titled 'To Dare & to Care' – were contained in a 90-page document. Unlike last year, the Budget will be held earlier on June 7, at 3 p.m.

Staff

No less than 600 copies of the 2024-25 budget will be printed at the printing press of the Ministry of Finance. A first batch of 200 copies will be sent to the National Assembly. The final copy, that is, the one that will be read by the Grand Treasurer, will be saved on a USB key, to which only one person will have access. As a reminder, some measures were leaked last year a few days before the Minister of Finance's speech.

Furthermore, 368 civil servants were in one way or another involved in the preparations for June 7. One of them, Roshan Sultoo, Lead Analyst, says that the Budget exercise is complicated and cannot be done in a day. “It’s about three months of work. The Minister of Finance has had a lot of consultations with stakeholders. All staff work collaboratively to prepare this Budget. Long overtime hours were worked,” he added.