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503
MAURITIUS
CURRENCY AND EXCHANGE
Report by Mr. H. Beckett on his Mission to Mauritius. May-August, 1925.
To the Right Honourable L. S. AMERY, M.P.,
SIR,
Secretary of State for the Colonies.
In April, 1925, I received your instructions to proceed to Mauritius on a special mission in connection with the currency and exchange problems which had arisen in that Colony. Accordingly I left Marseilles by the earliest opportunity, and reached Mauritius by the Messageries Maritime s.s.
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Dumbéa on the 31st of May. I remained in the Island until the 17th of August, when I left for England via South Africa.
2. Before leaving London I had been provided with the draft of a speech indi- cating your general views, which I was authorised to make either to the Council of Government or at some special conference as the Governor might wish.
The Treasury and India Office had already been semi-officially consulted as to the draft and the general position, and my instructions were that on arrival in Mauritius I should discuss with the Governor the terms of the speech and generally the manner in which he wished me to proceed. The substance of this speech forms Appendix I to this report.
3. At the earliest possible moment after arrival, I submitted copies of the pro- posed speech to the Governor and the Colonial Secretary. They fully agreed in the statement of the position which it contained, but were both of opinion that on account of local considerations, which I need not here recapitulate, it would not be at all desirable to make any public statement for the time being. They recom- mended that I should proceed immediately to see a number of the most prominent inhabitants of the Colony, and discuss the position with them privately. In this manner I should be able to ascertain what prospects of success awaited the various possible courses of action. I adopted this policy, and interviewed a considerable number of gentlemen, including Sir H. Leclézio, K.C.M.G., Mr. Louis Rouillard, K.C., President of the Commercial Bank, M. Pierre Montocchio, Chairman of the Sugar Syndicate, Mr. Dickson, Manager of the Mercantile Bank of India, Mr. Bettis, Manager of the National Bank of South Africa, MM. J. A. Duclos, C.M.G., J. Leclézio, M. Martin, E. Nairac, E. Rouillard, Ph. Raffray, F. H. Elyard, R. Maingard, Captain John Ireland, Messrs. R. Gujadhur, D. Lallah, I. Toorawa. L. A. Kuong Hue, A. Konfortion and others.
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These interviews, being confidential in character, enabled me to obtain a better knowledge of the actual views entertained than would have been possible at general discussion. For the same reason, however, I am precluded from attribut- ing any particular views thus elicited to particular persons, and have to confine myself to a general summary of the conclusions to which I was led.
4. As you are already familiar with the circumstances which led up to the present difficulties in Mauritius, it is not necessary for me to go into past history further than is necessary for consideration of those difficulties with a view to their solution. For this purpose the following observations may not be out of place.
The question of currency and exchange in Mauritius, in view of the trade relations of the Colony with England and Europe on the one hand and India on the other, is one to which no entirely satisfactory solution can ever be found so long as an unstable rate of exchange subsists between India and the United Kingdom. The advantages of stabilisation in the abstract are generally agreed, but it is obvious that under present conditions a country having a fixed exchange with the United Kingdom must suffer from fluctuations in regard to its relations with India and vice versa. Thus on looking into past history we find the period during which
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