Source

PORT LOUIS, MAURITIUS, August 14, 2003: After winning independence from Britain in 1968, the government of this island off the coast of Madagascar, decided to embrace the global economy, creating an export zone with low taxes and relaxed labor laws. Clothing companies set up textile factories on the island, turning Mauritius into a powerhouse. Median household income nearly doubled in the 1990s, to roughly $380 a month last year, making it one of the most prosperous nations in Africa. Its textile business grew so rapidly — tuning out clothes for such global brands as Gap and Calvin Klein — that employers had to import workers from China and India to staff their production lines. Last year, with help from beneficial trade agreements, Mauritius exported $913 million in clothing to the U.S. and Europe. But now Mauritius is starting to see the downside of free trade. As trade barriers ease around the world, China and India are flooding the world’s markets with their own textiles and undercutting Mauritius’s prices by drawing on their own vast pools of cheap labor. Since the late 1990’s, thousands of Mauritians have left the textile factories as they have closed or downsized. The unemployment rate among Mauritians, who are mostly ethnic Indians, crept up to 9.8 percent last year, from less than 3 percent a decade ago. In some factories, the imported workers from China and India have been kept on while the local Mauritians have been laid off. The nation has broadened into tourism and financial services over the years, but the garment industry directly and indirectly employs nearly one in five working Mauritians.

Post Views: 224