Rundheersing Bheenick: Working in the interest of Mauritius - Central
Banker of the Year 2012, Africa
Acceptance speech by Mr Rundheersing Bheenick, Governor of the Bank of Mauritius, on
receiving the Central Banker of the Year 2012, Africa Award from The Banker Magazine,
London, 25 February 2012.
* * *
Thank you, The Banker Magazine; thank you, Mr Caplen, respected editor of The Banker;
thank you, members of the panel for the generous acknowledgement of the Bank's
achievements during these most troubled and testing times in living memory.
Thank you, Chairman of the Board of Investment, for hosting this event this evening and for
your personal involvement in the organization of tonight's function.
I am deeply honoured to have been handpicked to receive this prestigious Award of Central
Banker of the Year 2012, Africa, by The Banker Magazine. This is more, much more, than a
personal honour. I see in it an accolade for my family, my friends, my teachers, my
collaborators, my well-wishers and all those, including my critics, who have made me what I
am; I also see this as an accolade for the institution which I lead, and for my country.
I am truly humbled, and deeply moved, that such a distinction is being conferred on a Central
Bank Governor from a small island lost in the Indian Ocean. My country has a population of
just 1.3 million, a tiny fraction of the one billion teeming on the African continent. Our
economy is pocket-sized, with a GDP of US Dollars 11 billion, against Africa's US Dollars
4 trillion. These two metrics suffice to bring out the immensity and the extraordinary nature of
this distinction - a first in our 45-year history of central banking. We are a gutsy nation; it is in
our nature to punch above our weight. And we are the first ones to be surprised when we
walk away with the prize.
As I stand before you tonight, I am lost for words. Just as I was dumbfounded and
incredulous when my long-suffering Chef de Cabinet first announced it to me at the end of a
regular daily morning one-on-one consultation which had not gone well and had become
unusually heated. She had been saving it for the end as a piece of good news. The prospect
of such an award was not even remotely on my radar and I really thought she was joking or
being ironical to defuse the tension. It took quite some convincing before I thought it was
genuine and could be persuaded to talk to the editor of The Banker. And my first questions to
him were: "Why? Why us? What have we done to bring us to your attention?" The news was
followed by an avalanche of congratulatory phone calls, emails, text messages, and letters
from well-wishers the world over. I can tell you it is a moving and overwhelming experience.
Lost for words, for once in my career as Governor. I thought I should share these feelings
with you this evening.
I accept the Award. I accept it with great humility. I accept it on my own behalf. I accept it on
behalf of my colleagues at the Bank of Mauritius, in particular my inner circle, my garde
rapprochée, who put up with me (well, most of the time), who share my vision, and some of
my convictions (and talk me out of others) - without their support, I would hardly have been
effective, and would probably not have survived this long at the Bank. I accept the Award on
behalf of my countrymen.
I accept it on behalf of those who placed their trust in me. Here I have a special thought for
the Prime Minister, Dr Navinchandra Ramgoolam, who nominated me to the position after I
had served as Minister in his first Government from 1995 to 2000. A staunch believer in the
rule of law, he respects the autonomy and independence of the central bank. Can a
Governor ask for more? I was lucky to get more. He stood by me and believed in me
particularly when I was subjected to a concerted attack from all sides. I may very well be in
the top league of governors to have been most reviled during their tenure. Goethe had not
got it quite right when he said "Viel Feind, Viel Her" - I was blessed with a plethora of
enemies but found little honour in it.
More than anything, it is the unwavering support of my Prime Minister that enabled me to
maintain an equally unwavering focus on the statutory mandate of the Bank.
This distinction is also a ray of hope for small jurisdictions like Mauritius. Let this be a source
of inspiration for SIDS everywhere. Small Island Developing States, do not despair. We are
not condemned to a life of me-tooism. We can plough our own furrow and seek salvation in
our own different ways. Regardless of one's size or location, we can all aspire to the premier
league.
We have in our midst this evening my venerated tutors and mentors from my undergraduate
days at Oxford and a bevy of dignitaries - indeed this is the kind of moment that you
absolutely must share with family, friends, partners, colleagues from international institutions,
and all those who walked part of the way with you in your life, personal, social, professional,
or a mixture of all of them. I thank you all for your presence here to-night.
As I landed at Heathrow the other day, my mind drifted off to my first days in England when I
was a carefree student, from a remote island colony, a rural country boy from a village with
no electricity, no telephone, and little running water, who had never spent more than a couple
of nights away from home, and who could read and write Latin and Greek better than his
peers. I was more interested in satisfying my deep curiosity for all the novelties that I was
discovering. I wasn't really thinking of my future. In fact, I was wondering what to do with my
life.
I was barely out of my teens, not yet twenty. I had a prized seat at Merton College, one of the
oldest - if not the oldest - at Oxford University. I was going to read Greats...but I was going
through an existential crisis. I had successfully resisted my parents' calls to pressure me to
become a lawyer or a medical doctor, the prestigious occupations that attracted the six
"laureates" of which I was one. I was quite aware that a University education was not
vocational or professional training. But I could not help asking myself, was there much
mileage left in the classics? I had just been reading some Maupassant short stories. The
punch line of one of them was fresh on my mind: le latin ne nourrit pas son homme!
There used to be an outfit called Mauritius Students Unit, operating from a small office in
Upper Montagu Street, off Baker Street, run by an energetic lady called Miss Rittner. She set
up an interview for me at Merton. Peter Chellen, also with us tonight, used to work at the
Unit. I found myself on the short train journey to Oxford - and soon wondering whether I had
alighted at the wrong destination when the first sign I came across on leaving the station said
in huge letters: "Welcome to Oxford, the Home of Pressed Steel." Was this the ancient seat
of learning I had been reading about? I was confronted by the formidable trio of PPE tutors:
John Black for economics, John Lucas for philosophy and Dr Pelczynski for politics. I thank
Dr Pelczynski and John Lucas, and also Vijay Joshi who took over from John Black later, for
being with us tonight.
I do not remember much about the interview except for some vague recollection of having
stirred some interest when I qualified Greats, the pride of Oxford, as being:
"backwardlooking." Anyway, the upshot was that I was allowed to change over to Modern Greats, as
the Honour School of Philosophy, Politics and Economics was known. But life is so full of
surprises - your footsteps sometimes take you where you do not dream of going in the first
place.
To cut a long story short, I was swimming against the tide when I returned to
newlyindependent Mauritius in 1968 after my studies. The flow was very much in the other
direction, with people leaving in droves, searching for better prospects, as Mauritius was
seen as a basket-case with no prospects whatever. My journey took me successively to the
newly-established University of Mauritius, the equally recent Economic Planning Unit of the
Prime Minister's Office, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation in Vienna,
the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, the Ministry of Finance, and the Bank
of Mauritius. I am proud to have been associated with all these institutions and to have
brought my modest contribution to the construction of the nation.
Every position brought its own unique challenges. When I became Governor of the Bank of
Mauritius in 2007, I was entering new territory. I was a macro-economist and a policy analyst,
but not a banker or regulator either by temperament or profession. The environment in which
banks operated had become very complex and highly volatile - quite a challenge for a
newlyminted Governor. I could build on the work of my immediate predecessors who had, in their
own way, contributed to strengthen the banking sector.
I also thank the banking community - which is represented tonight by Ravin Dajee, Chairman
of the Mauritius Bankers Association, and James Benoit, Vice Chairman of the Association,
in their normal working life, CEO of Barclays Bank Mauritius and the CEO of Afrasia Bank,
respectively. The relative success that Mauritius has achieved in economic and social
development rests on the solid bedrock of regular public/private dialogue. At the core of this
is the dialogue between the Bank and the CEO's of all banks in Mauritius - which is
unmatched in its regularity, its frequency and its intensity - which has helped us enormously
to shield our small open and vulnerable economy from the crisis.
The award is thus a tribute to the collective contribution of the Government, the Central
Bank, the banking industry, and the Mauritian private sector. I would like to think of this
distinction as a celebration of the progress of my country towards economic and social
salvation.
The crisis throws up new and unexpected problems around the world everyday: uncertainty
persists in financial markets; spillovers on the real economy leave in their wake negative
sentiment, poor growth and tenacious unemployment levels; fiscal and debt sustainability
concerns cause serious apprehension; and reduced incomes depress consumption and
investment levels. Amidst such global mayhem, our resource-constrained country
surprisingly fared quite well.
We have posted positive growth rates throughout the crisis, averaging 4 per cent per year or
not far below trend levels. Unemployment is at 8 per cent, a far cry from the rising
joblessness in some of our major markets. Inflation has come down. Reserves have gone up.
Our banks are solid and well-capitalised. I can be forgiven for believing that smallness is no
longer a liability. Quite the contrary: it can be a source of added adaptive advantage. It gives
our policymakers a quick-response capacity and the flexibility to change gear quite rapidly to
adapt to the constantly-changing environment that has become the new normal. And this is
what has so far spared Mauritius from the worst effects of the crisis.
My five years as Governor coincide almost perfectly with the run of the crisis. As can be
expected, they have certainly not been de tout repos. I initiated the practice of issuing an
annual Letter to Stakeholders, where I highlight the activities of the central bank during the
past year. I titled my last letter, issued two weeks ago, "Pummeled, Hammered,
Buffeted...But Still on Course!". I was referring to the economy, but the title may also serve
as a short-hand description of my own tenure as Governor. Pummeled, hammered, buffeted,
I may have been but, through thick and thin, I have kept my eyes firmly focused on the best
interest of the nation as I sought to live up to the trust placed in me to lead the Bank of
Mauritius.
Governors have a very tough job in a crisis-ridden world. They are constantly the subject of
public scrutiny. They are the butt of jokes, the target of criticism, the object of much invective,
with their fitness - occasionally their very sanity - being publicly questioned. They walk a
tight rope most of the time. They need to take bold and timely decisions that make them
unpopular. If they shirk such decisions, they court disaster. It is a case of "damned if they do,
and damned if they don't". Yet, they have to remain resolute, determined to do whatever their
job entails. If they are unlucky, they are terminated, with their gubernatorial life being - if I
can borrow some words from Hobbes - "nasty, brutish and short."
I have a long list of "Thank you's" tonight. I could have kept it short and said simply: I thank
my parents for making it possible - and family, friends, and colleagues for making it
necessary. But that won't do, will it? So, please bear with me for a few more minutes. Let me
call a few to take a bow.
Zbigniew Pelczynski, Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke College, the Politics Tutor, I shared with
Bill Clinton.
John Lucas, Fellow of the British Academy, Emeritus Fellow of Merton College, my tutor in
Philosophy.
Vijay Joshi, Senior Research Fellow of St John's College, Emeritus Fellow of Merton, and my
tutor in Economics after John Black left Merton to take a chair in Exeter University.
I thank them for the guidance and advice that they gave me, a young country bumpkin, and
helped to make me the man I am today. I am extremely grateful to them.
I would have wished to mention each and every teacher, family member, friend and
collaborator by name for their contribution - I can assure you I am not lost for words when it
comes to gratitude - but time constraints and your patience prevent me from doing that.
I thank my mother, my wife of 40 years, my son and my daughter for the sacrifices they have
silently endured, while I was away from home - which was most of the time, since even
when I was there physically, I was not really there - I am your proverbial absentee parent -
absorbed by my other concerns and responsibilities. I thank my wider family who share my
patronym for stoically accepting their lot when they have had to take part of the flak as I have
never ceased being publicly lambasted and pilloried, and called all manner of names - some
of which you cannot mention in polite company - since I traded the comfort and anonymity of
the civil service mandarinate for the hurly-burly of politics and the unrelenting public spotlight
in an unforgiving environment where fair comment has long lost the battle against
outrageous libel and quasi-criminal defamation. Some, closely-related, regret the shared
patronym and have been known to disown the connection. I understand. Lately, others -
quite unrelated - claim a close relation. Such is life.
My professional career was much enriched by my interaction with colleagues from the World
Bank, the IMF, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and elsewhere. I thank Michel Devaux and
Paul Blay, both of the World Bank, and both here tonight, for the great support they gave in
the dark days when Mauritius was a patient in intensive care, undergoing structural
adjustment in the early 1980's, and for their friendship ever since. I thank Bishnu Persaud for
his support in equally-critical work on small island-states. I thank Percy Mistry for being a
goading critic and a constant source of encouragement.
I thank Mihaela Smith, and through her, the entire network of the Commonwealth Partnership
for Technology Management, for always pushing me in new directions at that critical
interface where academia and technology intersect the world of politics. I thank Ian Downing
for being such a great Master of Ceremonies tonight. I thank Maurice Lam and the Board of
Investment for sponsoring this event. I thank The Banker for having provided the reason to
bring us all together. And thank you very much, all of you, ladies and gentlemen, dear
friends, for gracing the occasion with your valued presence.
Finally, beyond those I have mentioned and all of you present here tonight, I am also grateful
to all those who, one way or another, extended some moral support to me in times of need. I
am referring here, in the words of Luther King, to all those "people who make a successful
journey possible - the known pilots and the unknown ground crew."
Thank you for your attention.