New book to record our economic reforms |21 March 2013

The World Bank’s chief economist for Africa Shantayanan Devarajan said this at State House after meeting Vice-President Danny Faure.

“Seychelles represents an almost textbook case of having undertaken difficult but correct reforms which worked and showed results,” he said.

The economist said the book will show that the leadership took courageous steps and it will serve as a lesson for other countries especially other small island economies around the world.
“They will say, ‘here is a country that undertook reforms which actually delivered results’.”

He said the book is already in draft form and it might be published by June in time for the anniversary of our Third Republic.

The World Bank is providing quality assurance and the people writing it sent it to the bank to countercheck many of its aspects against the quality standards it normally has for its publications.

He said Mr Faure appreciated the World Bank’s support for Seychelles and the two talked about the fact that Seychelles is an interesting country where “they don’t rest on their laurels,” he said, giving as an example the fact that we were previously behind Mauritius on the Human Development Index but we have worked hard to better our performance and overall global rank.
“This is a sign of a country that isn’t satisfied with its considerable accomplishments but wants to do better,” he said.

Mr Devarajan was here to attend the two-day meeting at which ministers from Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles and Zambia have been working on a programme seeking to remove trade barriers and foster economic ties.

Speaking to Nation earlier, he said our oil wealth is likely to be widely shared among the population, the way we are sharing the revenue from tourism and fisheries.