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Published 1st May 2010

Vol 3 (AAC) No 7

Mauritius

Round-trips and hot money

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures
Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

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Indian companies are routing tens of billions of dollars through Mauritius each year in a giant tax avoidance scheme

India is changing its tax laws in a bid to introduce greater transparency into its financial transactions with Mauritius. The aim is to stem ‘round-tripping’ of funds by politicians, businessmen and criminal syndicates, and assuage concerns about the unregulated and ‘hot’ money which transits through the Mauritian economy and into India. The licit and illicit financial flows from Mauritius account for as much as 90%, or tens of billions of dollars, of foreign direct investment in India each year.

Oiling the gears

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

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Beijing’s biggest African offer yet is a risky gambit to gain a major stake in the upstream and downstream sectors of Nigeria’s oil business

Equal measures of optimism and scepticism greeted China’s announcement of an agreement to build three oil refineries worth US$23 billion. The terms of the memorandum of understanding are clear; the...

Asian solutions for Africa’s refinery problems

With limited domestic markets and poor infrastructure, the building of African refineries by Asian countries is often interpreted as cementing political ties rather than economic ones. China’s Sinopec balked at the...

CIF, Beijing’s stalking horse

Beijing’s relationship with the China International Fund is much clearer than it likes to admit. When the Hong Kong-registered CIF signed multibillion-dollar deals with pariah regimes in Guinea...

Slow to let go of Hitachi

Faced with popular outcry about profiteering from electricity shortages and opaque ties between political parties and businesses, South Africa’s governing African National Congress is being forced to abandon its stake in...

Beleaguered Bélinga

Gabon’s huge iron mine project due to begin production in 2011 has been delayed again by the new government’s plans to renegotiate terms

When Gabon’s President El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba was alive, his ministers had nothing but praise for the nearly US$4 billion Bélinga iron ore mine and associated logistics projects, described...

Building on oil money

The US$10 billion STX housing deal gets its first hearing in Parliament just as the government prepares to borrow $1.5 bn. in future oil revenues

The Ghanaian government is proposing to put up US$1.5 billion of its future oil revenues to finance the first phase of a controversial housing project with the South Korean construction...

Pointers

Nguyen Minh Triet

President of Vietnam

On his April trip to North Africa, Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet ramped up interest in the second Vietnam-Africa forum, set for August 2010. In Algeria and Tunisia,...

Stan Mudenge

Higher Education Minister, Zimbabwe

Isaak Stanislaus Gorerazvo Mudenge’s role as Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front’s Secretary for External Affairs keeps him in the foreign policy loop and he took part in Zimbabwe’s...

Ajai Chowdhry

Chairman, HCL Infosystems

Lessons from India’s rise can be fruitfully applied to Africa – another group of a billion or so people: this was the message Ajai Chowdhry brought to Tanzania....

Mike Hung

Chairman, Taiwan-Africa Industrial Development Association

Taiwan’s entrepreneurs are loath to let geopolitical concerns stand in the way of a good deal. In the 1980s, while the governments of Taipei and Beijing continued to...

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