Agri-business takes centre stage: thousands of agri-business enterprises are being established in Mauritius. With government support and incentives, these companies are processing and exporting agricultural products to new markets in Europe and Australia. Nasseem Ackbarally reports from Port-Louis.

Revenues from Mauritius' non-sugar agricultural sector contracted to under $81m in 2005. Alarmed at this trend, Agriculture Minister Arvin Boolell has given new vigour to agri-business by elaborating a national and regional strategy for the development for the sector. "We cannot sit back, relax and enjoy our comfort when things on the economic front are becoming very difficult for us," Bolell told entrepreneurs at a national forum on agri-business last April. "The concept of [just achieving] food security is no longer on the agenda."

[GRAPHIC OMITTED]

Since the 1990s, agriculture has become a business like any other economic activity," says Jean-Claude Autrey, director of the Mauritius Sugar Industry Research Institute. According to Autrey, Mauritius, has got very good producers but not necessarily good entrepreneurs. Producers must, he says, get a sharper sense of business, achieve control of production costs and obtain accurate information about international markets, how they are moving, prices and seasonal fluctuations, and an understanding of consumers' tastes and preferences.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

This is where the Agricultural Research and Extension Unit (AREU), a state-funded institution, steps in. For more than three years it has been carrying out research and developing new varieties of plants, training farmers and entrepreneurs in the best use of pesticides, insecticides and fertilisers, as well as researching markets and post-harvest processing and preservation. Transforming Mauritius' agricultural products into food products sought by international consumers is key to stimulating the island's agri-business growth.

AREU has helped create numerous small agri-business enterprises on the island. Other enterprises that have been launched independently are seeking the institution's free technical advice to expand their business. AREU's mission is to conduct cost-effective high-quality research into how best the country's agricultural sector can meet government policy in terms of diversification, food production and developing new agro-industries.

"We are here to raise farm productivity and hence farm income; to provide farmers with important technical back-up with packages that will enable them to take advantage of existing and emerging markets, locally and abroad and to support agri-business generally," AREU's assistant director, Dhaneswar Dumur, explains.

"This institution's job is to overcome the farmers' and the entrepreneurs' problems, provide them with opportunities for wealth creation and to improve their quality of life," he added.

Training of young entrepreneurs and farmers at its model farms and the distribution of free information pamphlets and other publications disseminating research work and advice is part of the work of the AREU's staff of 50 agricultural scientists and 20 technicians. An agri-business advice desk also speeds up things for entrepreneurs.

One course, mostly for women entrepreneurs, led by Shivranee Ori, an AREU Senior Extension Officer, is aimed at teaching techniques of processing and preserving fruits and vegetables for the production of pickles, of chips from potato, sweet potato and banana, as well as dehydrated and frozen fruits and vegetables.

Companies profit from abundance

Eugenie Foods, situated at Bambous, in western Mauritius, is one company that has made good use of this course. Four years ago, Jocelyne Laurent and her husband used all their savings and took a bank loan to launch their enterprise producing fruit and vegetable pickles, chilli chutney, mango chutney, mixed banana/lychee chutney and other products. Today, Eugenie Foods is supplying not only the local market and the big tourist hotels but also markets in Europe and Australia.

"There is a huge interest for our exotic products in Europe, but one must meet quality requirements which is not easy for a small enterprise," Laurent told African Business. According to her, plenty of suitable products are available on the island for agri-business start-ups.

Apart from the farmers who cultivate them in orchards, many Mauritians have fruit trees such as mango, lychee, pawpaw and coconut growing in their backyards. Laurent collects fruit from these local people for processing and packaging into export food products.

Sedna Foods, in northern Mauritius, is another example. Sacked by a textile enterprise after 15 years, 35-year-old Ritesh Roopnauth launched a small enterprise to produce salted banana and potato chips. He researched his markets, sought information from local institutions and the internet, received some equipment worth about $6,500 from the European Commission and started production this year. He now dreams of air-freighting his products to other Indian Ocean islands and to Europe.

Developing abandoned land

Others entrepreneurs are transforming abandoned sugar estates into prosperous enterprise. Jean Noel Cerdor and two friends from his small home town of Albion have already succeeded in this.

Cerdor was a candidate at the local elections last year and he campaigned in favour of the transformation of abandoned land into vegetable gardens to create much-needed employment. Eight months later, he practised what he preached by cultivating quality tomatoes on a piece of abandoned land near his home.

Meanwhile, Ocean Tropical Fruits is exporting pineapples and lychees, collected from local farmers, to Europe. Its director, Vikram Hurdoyal, won the Outstanding Agribusiness Entrepreneurship award last April. He plans to export 500 tons of pineapple and 150 tons of lychees this year.

Another entrepreneur, Shreedanand Cullychurn from MFL Exports Ltd, has gone a step further. He worked in the sugar fields and in the textile industry before starting a business taking vegetables to the local markets. Then he began supplying fruits and vegetables to the hotel industry. Now he has begun an export business mainly shipping pineapples and lychees to Europe. He is also sourcing various other fruits from not only from Mauritius but neighbouring Madagascar--like lychees, lemon, kaki (persimmon) and also green beans--that have a ready market in Europe.

"It works out perfectly well between us and Madagascar," he says. He has brought bean seeds from Madagascar to Mauritius, trained some farmers locally with the help of AREU and now he expects them to cultivate green beans for export.

Mauritius' agri-business entrepreneurs enjoy several incentives under the government's Agricultural Technology Diffusion Scheme which meets 75% of the expenses of obtaining export advice. Pineapple exporters also benefit from a 50% Freight Rebate Scheme.

AREU is now working to establish a mushroom village, a hydroponics village, and a milk production village. These can be used as model farms and replicated elsewhere on the island.

RELATED ARTICLE: TRANSPORT

Good roads but crazy drivers

Roads in Mauritius may be good, but the death toll and number of casualties from accidents just keeps on rising. It is quite common for drivers to be too fast and careless with the result that 694 people were killed on the roads in the last five years, and thousands severely injured. Considering the island's population is just 1.2m-strong, these are appalling casualty figures.

Police statistics indicate that 40% of road accidents are alcohol related with drivers killed having alcohol concentration levels above the prescribed limit (50mg/100ml of blood). According to Police Commissioner Ramanooj Gopalsingh, random alcohol tests carried out from 2004 to June 2006 have revealed that more than 2,250 people were driving under the influence of alcohol. "This is convincing evidence that drunken and reckless driving is the nation's most frequently committed crime," he states.

Land Transport Minister Rashid Beebeejaun adds that out of a total of 2,863 alcohol tests carried out at random on drivers between January and December 2004, 1,076, or 37.6%, had an alcohol level above the limit authorised.

"This statistic rose in 2005 when the drink-driving rate reached 40%. This year between January and June last, 362 out of 858 drivers tested were driving in a drunken state" the minister stated. Under previous legislation, drivers prosecuted and convicted of drink-driving offences were permitted, after a certain time, to get behind the wheel again. But the law has been amended since July to allow police to immediately suspend the driving licence of any driver who either causes the death of a person while driving in a drunken state, or having an alcohol rate exceeding the limit prescribed by 100%. Upon conviction, the driver is liable to a fine of between $810 and $1,620 and imprisonment of up to three years.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Driving with alcohol concentration above the prescribed limit, upon first conviction, now leads to a fine of between $325 and $810 and a jail term of up to six months.

Upon a second conviction, the driver is liable to a fine of between $650 and $1,620 and imprisonment of between six months and a year. If the alcohol concentration exceeds the prescribed limit by 100%, the driver's licence is suspended immediately and he is liable to the same penalty. Any driver refusing to undergo an alcohol test will have his driving licence suspended immediately.