Wage Increase: MEF Undertakes a Survey

The questions to company directors - to allow MEF to prepare its report before the start of pre-budget consultations in September - are focused on their current situation and future prospects. The directors are, among others, asked to vote on their "capacity to grant a pay increase" and they intend to conduct recruitment or redundancies in the coming months.

So far, economic reports published by the MEF and the Mauritius Chamber of Commerce and Industry, showed that business confidence deteriorated. Indeed, a vast majority of business leaders argued that the uncertain situation in the world, and particularly in our key markets, had a negative impact on business. Therefore, the companies plan to "reduce their investments and maintain the status quo or, in the worst case, to make a degreasing."

The threat of dismissal persists

While the employers 'federation (MEF - Mauritius Employers' Federation) is conducting a salary survey to determine whether the private sector will be able to offer a salary compensation to employees this year, the specter of redundancy still looms.

Indeed, only for the first five months of the year, more than 800 employees were laid off for economic reasons. The majority of those who have lost their jobs, or 374 of them working in the manufacturing sector. Other licensees evolved mainly in real estate, catering and construction.

In that it is the public sector, wage compensation will be payable if the inflation rate is higher than 5% (note: inflation is currently around 3.6%) and "reflect the differential only ". That, insofar as the salaries of civil servants were revised upward in 2013 with the publication of wage Pay Research Bureau report.

During the last year of salary compensation, the estimated 350,000 private sector employees had received an increase between Rs 300 and Rs 345. The overall cost of this increase was estimated at Rs 1.6 billion.