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31 August - Mauritius (Port Louis) |
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James Charnaud
I have been in Mauritius all week.
For several years the Government has been trying to diversify the island's economy from its heavy reliance on tourism and sugar production. Like many small tropical islands they find it very hard to compete with the massive-scale sugar production in places such as Brazil. The island is well-run and has a lot going for it - education levels are high and the population is multi-lingual (French, English and Creole). Staff costs are relatively low. The Government has implemented several programmes to attract foreign investment and these are really paying off. They include huge tax incentives, no restrictions on foreign exchange transfers, and a specific department designed to assist companies looking to locate here.
The island has two main office areas. The first is downtown Port Louis where the banks and Government are located. It commands the highest rentals of MUR 70-90 /sq ft /month (US$28-32 /sq ft /year) for the best space on the waterfront. It has very bad congestion at peak times. The second is Cyber City in Ebene roughly 12 km south-east of the city centre. This business park was set up by the Government to provide an area away from the congested centre where corporations can take space in modern buildings with reasonably large floor plates. It originally attracted tax incentives, but these expired in 2008. The Government constructed the first building, Ebene Cyber Tower, in 2004 and the park has been such a success that it now has over 20 significant developments, a hotel and a small shopping centre nearby, with the Mall of Mauritius just breaking ground over the main M2 highway. There is currently a lot of availability on the park. Although it provides the best quality buildings, rents are quoted in the order of MUR 40 /sq ft /month (US$16 /sq ft /year), and deals can be done below this level. Here are some photos I took of the development earlier today.
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28 July - Nigeria (Lagos) |
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Ruairi Moriarty
It is four weeks since my last visit to Lagos and I have arrived during a break in the rainy season. The interlude is known as the 'mango rains', which is a benign 10 days or so break before the rains recommence and finally end towards the beginning of October. There has been severe flooding in parts of Lagos' central business district of Victoria Island (VI), particularly around Engineering Close and which also has created problems in accessing Banana Island. Work continues on the Eko Atlanticproject which is rumoured as the largest metropolitan reclamation scheme currentlyongoing in the world (see photo of works below). Dredgers are creating over nine square kilometers of new land off of Bar Beach which runs the length of the southern end of VI. The scheme is being developed by the Chaghouri family on a private equity basis, where they have been granted the concession to sell the reclaimed land, in return for having created a protective sea wall running the length of Bar Beach. The already created sea wall has proven effective in preventing the previously serious erosion and flooding of the critical route of Ahmadu Bello Way, a major link between VI and Lagos Island. I understand that the first land sales have taken place to developers in the order of $1,500-2,000 /sq m, with some interest being shown from Middle Eastern concerns.
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