Prof Paul Collier reminded us the other day when he gave a lecture at the Bank of the tremendous pressure in slow-growing middle-income countries, which find themselves unable to keep pace with either the more dynamic developing countries fast catching up on them or the fast-growing middle-income countries getting further and further ahead of them.
In the 2009 Industrial Development Report of UNIDO, Mauritius shows signs of becoming exactly such a slow-growing middle-income economy: we occupy the 55th position, far behind Malaysia (16th), Turkey (43rd), Tunisia (49th), and not that far ahead of Bangladesh at 87th position. In the “logistics performance index”, we do much worse, trailing in 132nd out of 150 countries.