Measurement Failure and the Political Economy of the "Blue Economy"

Mauritius has spoken about the "blue economy" for more than a decade, yet it remains one of the least measured parts of the national economic system. Unlike tourism, manufacturing, or financial services, the ocean economy has never been fully translated into national accounts, fiscal metrics, or performance indicators that would allow policymakers, investors, or citizens to evaluate its real contribution. What exists instead is a persistent narrative: that Mauritius is an "ocean state" with vast potential. The absence of measurement has allowed this narrative to endure without being tested.

The Core Failure: No Marine Satellite Account

At the core of this measurement failure is the absence of a marine or ocean satellite account integrated into national accounts. Satellite accounts are routinely used worldwide to measure sectors that cut across traditional classifications—tourism being the most obvious example. Mauritius successfully developed tourism satellite accounts, which made the sector legible to policymakers and investors and helped justify infrastructure, marketing budgets, and fiscal incentives. No equivalent framework exists for fisheries, marine logistics, offshore energy, seabed resources, or marine services. As a result, the ocean economy remains statistically invisible, despite occupying a maritime zone of 2.3 million square kilometres—1,129 times larger than the country's 2,040 km² landmass.

This invisibility has direct consequences. Measuring the ocean economy would force confrontation with uncomfortable questions: how much value is actually generated domestically, who captures it, and over what time horizon. In sectors such as fisheries or port services, gross revenues can appear large while domestic value-added remains thin once foreign fleets, imported inputs, and profit repatriation are accounted for. Without proper accounting, gross activity is easily mistaken for national gain.

Conceptual Inflation and Institutional Fragmentation

The term "blue economy" has become a catch-all covering fisheries, tourism, renewable energy, marine finance, aquaculture, and port expansion without disaggregating these activities or clarifying which are productive, which extractive, and which merely supportive to existing rent-based sectors. The result is conceptual inflation: everything connected to the sea is treated as strategic, even when its economic impact is marginal or indirect.

Institutional fragmentation compounds the problem. Responsibility for ocean-related activities is dispersed across multiple ministries and agencies—fisheries, environment, energy, transport, finance, foreign affairs, tourism—none of which is mandated to produce a consolidated economic account of marine activity. Each institution reports within its own administrative logic, focusing on permits issued, projects announced, or regulations enforced, rather than on economic outcomes.

The Political Economy of Non-Measurement

There is a deeper political economy explanation for this measurement gap. Ocean-based sectors compete poorly with land-based rents in Mauritius. Tourism, real estate, and import-distribution systems generate visible, short-cycle cash flows and politically legible revenues. Ocean activities, by contrast, require patient capital, long planning horizons, and regulatory discipline. Fisheries management yields returns over years, not electoral cycles. Offshore energy projects demand upfront capital with delayed payback. Marine conservation imposes near-term costs for long-term resilience. These characteristics make the ocean economy unattractive within a system that rewards immediacy and incumbency.

This explains why the ocean is frequently invoked but rarely prioritised in budgetary terms. Without measurement, there is no baseline against which underperformance can be demonstrated. Without benchmarks, there is no accountability. Data absence becomes a form of political insulation: ambition can be declared without obligation to deliver.

The consequences accumulate over time. Policymakers cannot assess whether fisheries reduce food-import dependence documented in Section 38. Financial regulators cannot determine whether "marine finance" produces genuine cash flows or reputational exposure. Climate planners cannot quantify how much economic value is at risk from reef degradation or coastal erosion documented in Section 37. Investors, lacking data, default to sectors with clearer returns. The ocean economy becomes residual—strategic in speeches, peripheral in balance sheets.

Fisheries, Food Security, and the Limits of Marine Protein

Fisheries are the most frequently cited justification for Mauritius' blue economy ambitions, yet they expose the widest gap between narrative and measurable national benefit. In policy discourse, the surrounding ocean is framed as a latent food-security asset capable of reducing import dependence. In practice, fisheries contribute modestly to domestic food availability, generate limited fiscal revenue, and show weak upstream or downstream industrial development. The structure of the sector externalises value while internalising risk.

Mauritius' Exclusive Economic Zone is vast by global standards—2.3 million km², larger than most countries' entire territories. But size alone does not translate into food security. Industrial fishing in the Indian Ocean is dominated by distant-water fleets operating under access agreements, regional licensing regimes, or joint ventures. The bulk of high-value catches—particularly tuna—are harvested by foreign vessels, processed in transhipment hubs, and exported onward with limited domestic value-added. Local employment concentrates in low-margin activities such as port handling and basic processing, while profits accrue upstream to fleet owners and downstream to international traders.

Successful Fisheries Models: Iceland and Namibia

This model contrasts sharply with countries that deliberately structured fisheries as national assets. Iceland transformed its fisheries by linking quotas, processing, export strategy, and taxation into a single value chain. The result was not merely higher catches, but higher domestic value per tonne landed: Iceland's fisheries generate $2.5 billion annually, employ 8,000 people directly, and account for 30% of total exports. Transparent quota systems ensure fiscal accountability.

Namibia followed a similar path after independence, using quota allocation and onshore processing requirements to localise rents. Seychelles treats tuna fisheries explicitly as a fiscal asset: licensing fees of $15-20 million annually contribute 17% of government revenue, with Port Victoria handling 300,000+ tonnes transshipped—all publicly reported in budget documents. Mauritius has not pursued an equivalent strategy, despite possessing comparable legal tools.

The Food Security Measurement Gap

The implications for food security are often misunderstood. Much of the fish harvested in Mauritian waters is not destined for local consumption. High-value species are exported, while domestic markets rely heavily on imported staples—rice, wheat, pulses documented in Section 38—and frozen fish products. Available household expenditure data show food absorbing a large share of consumption, yet there is no published evidence that domestic fisheries materially reduce this burden.

Institutionally, fisheries governance remains fragmented. Licensing, conservation, enforcement, and industrial policy are handled through separate channels with limited integration into macroeconomic planning. There is no publicly available fisheries satellite account linking catches, employment, exports, imports, and fiscal revenues into a coherent framework. Nor is there transparent accounting of access fees relative to resource value extracted. This opacity weakens negotiating power vis-à-vis foreign fleets.

Ultimately, fisheries cannot carry the weight of blue economy ambitions alone. They are constrained by ecology, global market structures, and capital intensity. Treated strategically, they can support employment, generate moderate fiscal revenues, and contribute to protein diversity. Treated rhetorically, they become a substitute for hard choices about import dependence, land-based agriculture, and income distribution documented in Section 38. For the blue economy to move beyond symbolism, fisheries policy must shift from volume to value, from access to accountability, and from aspiration to measurement.

Port Services, Transshipment, and the Geography of Captured Value

Beyond fisheries, Mauritius' blue economy narrative increasingly centres on ports, logistics, and transshipment. The country's location along major east–west shipping lanes is presented as inherent comparative advantage, positioning Port Louis as a natural hub for maritime services. In theory, this should generate employment, foreign exchange earnings, and spillovers into logistics, finance, and maritime services. In practice, economic returns from port-based activities remain narrow, fee-driven, and structurally constrained by global shipping dynamics.

The Intermediary Activity Constraint

Port services are, by nature, intermediary activities. They generate value through throughput, speed, and reliability rather than through ownership of cargo or vessels. For small island economies, this distinction matters. High volumes do not automatically translate into high income. Transshipment hubs often operate on thin margins, competing aggressively on price and turnaround time. Bargaining power rests overwhelmingly with shipping lines and global logistics firms, not with host states.

The Port of Port Louis functions primarily as a service node rather than a value-creation centre. Revenue derives from port charges, bunkering, ship repair, and ancillary services. These activities support employment and contribute to services exports, but they do not fundamentally alter the country's external balance documented in Section 36. The cargo passing through is not Mauritian trade; it is global trade temporarily touching Mauritian infrastructure. Gross port activity can expand without commensurate increase in national income or fiscal space.

The Singapore Model vs Mauritius Reality

Singapore is often cited as the archetype of successful port-based economy. Yet Singapore's success rests not on transshipment alone, but on deep integration between port services, ship finance, arbitration, maritime law, and advanced manufacturing. The port is embedded in a dense ecosystem of high-value services: Singapore hosts 5,000+ maritime companies, employs 170,000+ in the maritime sector (7% of GDP), and generates $125 billion+ in maritime trade value annually. Mauritius' maritime sector lacks this depth.

At the other end of the spectrum, many developing-country ports illustrate risks of over-reliance on throughput. Ports can become capital-intensive enclaves, absorbing public investment while returning limited net benefits. Infrastructure expansion often requires concessional financing or public guarantees, while operational revenues are exposed to global shipping cycles. When volumes fall—as during global trade disruptions—states carry downside risk.

Governance and transparency further shape outcomes. Port concessions, public–private partnerships, and long-term lease arrangements determine who captures rents from maritime infrastructure. In Mauritius, there is no publicly available consolidated account of port revenues, concession terms, or fiscal returns relative to public investment. Without such disclosure, assessing whether the port functions as national asset or primarily as platform for private operators and global carriers becomes difficult.

The strategic question is not whether ports matter, but how they are positioned within the wider economy. Treated narrowly, ports generate service fees and modest foreign exchange earnings. Treated strategically, they can anchor higher-value activities—maritime insurance, dispute resolution, vessel financing, logistics analytics, regional headquarters functions. The latter requires deliberate institutional design, regulatory credibility, and human capital development. It cannot be achieved through infrastructure alone.

Maritime Finance, Ship Registry, and the Limits of Jurisdictional Arbitrage

A second pillar often invoked in ocean-economy strategy is maritime finance: ship registration, vessel leasing, marine insurance, and related legal and financial services. On paper, these activities promise a cleaner, more scalable pathway to value creation than fisheries or port throughput. They rely less on physical extraction and more on legal certainty, regulatory credibility, and financial expertise. For a small island economy with an established offshore financial sector, the logic appears compelling. Yet the gap between potential and realised value remains wide.

The Registry Model and Its Structural Limits

Mauritius operates an open ship registry promoting competitive registration fees, favourable tax treatment, and access to a stable legal system. Such registries generate revenue through tonnage fees, annual charges, and ancillary services. However, internationally, ship registries are classic examples of jurisdictional arbitrage. Owners choose flags not for deep economic integration, but for cost minimisation, regulatory flexibility, and administrative convenience. Loyalty is thin; switching costs are low.

Ship registries tend to be volume-driven rather than value-driven. Large fleets can be registered without meaningful connection to the domestic economy. Crews are foreign, vessels rarely call at local ports, and operational decisions are taken elsewhere. Registry revenues, while useful, are modest relative to national income and volatile in response to international regulatory changes, sanctions regimes, or reputational shocks.

The same structural constraint applies to maritime finance more broadly. Ship leasing, marine insurance, and vessel financing are globalised activities dominated by a handful of financial centres with deep capital markets, specialised courts, and long-established reputations. Competing in this space requires more than favourable statutes—it demands credibility built over decades, track record of dispute resolution, and integration into global capital networks.

Critically, Mauritius does not publish consolidated data on the scale or performance of its maritime financial activities—consistent with the measurement failure documented in Section 39.0. There is no public time series on registry revenues, number of vessels, tonnage registered, or contribution to services exports. Nor is there systematic disclosure on marine insurance premiums written, vessel finance volumes, or employment generated in maritime legal and financial services. This data absence makes assessing whether the sector is growing, stagnating, or maintaining symbolic presence difficult.

From a development perspective, the key issue is linkage. Maritime finance can be transformative only if it anchors a broader ecosystem: specialised courts, arbitration centres, maritime law expertise, technical training, and regional headquarters functions. Without these, the sector risks remaining an administrative layer—useful, but peripheral. Jurisdictional arbitrage is a fragile foundation for long-term growth. It depends on regulatory gaps elsewhere and can disappear when global norms shift. A resilient maritime finance strategy must move up the value chain, from registration and compliance toward risk-bearing, dispute resolution, and specialised services harder to relocate.

What We Don't Know: Systematic Data Gaps

The sections above have documented measurement failures across specific ocean sub-sectors. This section consolidates the data gaps systematically, revealing the full extent of what remains unmeasured, unpublished, or unavailable for rigorous analysis. These are not minor technical oversights—they represent core economic indicators that would be considered baseline requirements in any serious sectoral assessment.

These gaps are not random. They concentrate precisely where measurement would expose uncomfortable realities: value leakage to foreign actors, limited domestic capture from maritime activities, and the gap between gross activity and net national gain. Without these fundamental metrics, the ocean economy cannot be rigorously assessed, prioritised in fiscal terms, or held to account for performance claims.

Governance Fragmentation and Institutional Constraints

The data gaps documented above are symptoms of a deeper institutional constraint. Across fisheries, ports, marine services, and maritime finance, a recurring pattern emerges: ambition outpaces governance capacity, and policy narratives run ahead of measurable outcomes. The ocean economy is repeatedly framed as a strategic frontier, yet it remains weakly governed, thinly measured, and politically fragmented.

The Absence of Consolidated Ocean Governance

Responsibility for maritime affairs is dispersed across multiple ministries and agencies—already visualised in Section 39.0—with no single institutional body tasked with producing a comprehensive balance sheet of the ocean economy or coordinating long-term strategy across ecological, economic, and security dimensions. Policy coherence is limited; trade-offs are rarely made explicit.

This fragmentation has direct consequences. In the absence of measurable benchmarks, the ocean economy becomes a narrative space rather than an accountable policy domain. Projects can be announced without clear baselines, targets, or post-implementation evaluation. Success is framed in terms of initiatives launched rather than value created. Setbacks are difficult to diagnose. This weakens democratic oversight and limits the ability of Parliament, civil society, or investors to interrogate performance.

The Political Economy of Capital-Light Strategies

There is also a deeper political economy dimension. Ocean-economy strategies have tended to prioritise capital-light, externally oriented activities that minimise domestic disruption. Services, registries, and offshore frameworks are favoured over labour-intensive or politically sensitive transformations such as fisheries restructuring, coastal land-use reform, or energy transition documented in Section 38.

Governance weaknesses are further exposed by international dynamics. The ocean is increasingly a site of geopolitical competition, climate risk, and regulatory scrutiny. Issues such as illegal fishing, maritime security, emissions from shipping, and seabed resource governance are governed by complex international regimes. Small states that lack strong coordination and data systems struggle to defend their interests, comply with evolving standards, or leverage international partnerships effectively. Mauritius' ability to act as an ocean state depends not only on sovereignty over maritime zones, but on institutional capacity to manage them credibly.

A recurring issue is the gap between legal entitlement and economic capability. Mauritius controls a vast 2.3 million km² Exclusive Economic Zone, yet its enforcement capacity, scientific monitoring, and economic utilisation of that space remain limited. This creates a form of nominal abundance paired with practical scarcity. The ocean appears expansive on maps but narrow in fiscal and developmental impact.

Strategic Closure: The Ocean as State Capability Test

The evidence compiled across Sections 39.0 through 39.5 points to a conclusion both sober and unavoidable: Mauritius' ocean economy is not constrained by geography, legal entitlement, or lack of strategic relevance. It is constrained by the way strategy, institutions, and incentives are currently aligned. The country possesses an extensive maritime domain, relative political stability, and experience in services-led development. What it lacks is a credible mechanism for translating maritime space into sustained, measurable economic value that strengthens resilience rather than reproducing dependence.

Six Strategic Imperatives

First, the ocean economy cannot be treated as a single sector. Fisheries, ports, marine services, maritime finance, coastal tourism, and environmental stewardship operate on different economic logics and time horizons. Bundling them together under a "blue economy" label obscures trade-offs and encourages policy substitution, where progress in one area is used rhetorically to offset stagnation in another. A credible strategy requires explicit differentiation, with each maritime sub-domain assessed on its own capacity to generate value added, employment, foreign exchange, and ecological sustainability.

Second, Mauritius faces a strategic choice between depth and breadth. To date, policy has favoured breadth: multiple initiatives, memoranda, and regulatory frameworks spread across the maritime domain. The outcome has been limited depth. Registry services generate fees but few spillovers. Ports handle traffic but capture modest margins. Fisheries exist but remain structurally small. A shift toward depth would mean concentrating resources on a narrower set of activities where domestic capabilities can realistically be built, scaled, measured, and defended over time. This may be less politically attractive than announcing new initiatives, but it is more economically defensible.

Third, the ocean economy must be integrated into macroeconomic planning. At present, maritime activities are discussed largely in sectoral terms, disconnected from balance-of-payments constraints (Section 36), employment structure, or fiscal sustainability. Yet the strategic relevance of the ocean lies precisely in these macro linkages. Reduced import dependence, higher-value services exports, and more resilient logistics chains would directly affect external accounts and inflation dynamics. Without embedding maritime strategy into these core economic objectives, the ocean economy risks remaining peripheral.

Fourth, data is a strategic asset, not a technical afterthought. The absence of consolidated, publicly available statistics on maritime output, employment, exports, and public revenue prevents prioritisation, weakens accountability, and limits investor confidence. International partners and financiers increasingly demand evidence-based planning, particularly where climate and sustainability claims are involved. Building a credible ocean economy begins with publishing a basic, repeatable set of indicators that allow progress to be tracked and challenged.

Fifth, the political economy of reform cannot be avoided. Deepening the ocean economy would require confronting distributional issues currently deferred. Fisheries reform affects livelihoods. Port and logistics upgrading reshapes land use and labour relations. Energy transition in maritime transport challenges incumbent import structures (Section 38). These are not neutral technical adjustments; they are political choices. A strategy relying exclusively on capital-light, externally oriented services avoids these tensions but also forecloses transformative outcomes.

Finally, Mauritius' small-state status should be treated not as a branding device but as a strategic constraint. Smallness limits scale but increases the premium on coherence, credibility, and institutional quality. Ocean states that succeed do so not by competing on volume, but by aligning regulation, enforcement, skills, and data around a few defensible niches. For Mauritius, this implies accepting that the ocean economy will not replace all other growth engines, but it can meaningfully reinforce them if pursued with discipline.

The Ocean as Institutional Stress Test

This section closes by reframing the ocean economy not simply as a sectoral opportunity, but as a diagnostic lens through which the strengths and weaknesses of the Mauritian state become visible. By this stage of the analysis, the pattern is clear: Mauritius does not lack access, jurisdiction, or strategic relevance in the maritime domain. What remains uncertain is whether the institutional system is capable of converting ocean adjacency into sustained national advantage.

The ocean also demands credibility beyond branding. International partners—whether development banks, climate financiers, shipping firms, or research institutions—assess not only policy statements but delivery capacity. The absence of published multi-year implementation plans, audited performance metrics, and consolidated marine accounts documented in Section 39.4 weakens Mauritius' negotiating position. In effect, the country is asking to be trusted as a maritime platform without yet demonstrating the institutional machinery of one.

The ocean further challenges the political economy of rent. Many of Mauritius' established growth sectors generate returns through control of land, licences, or regulatory gateways. Ocean-based value creation, by contrast, depends more on productivity, technology, and risk-bearing. This reduces opportunities for easy rent extraction and increases exposure to global competition. As a result, ocean strategies tend to receive rhetorical support but limited political protection when they threaten existing equilibria.

Another constraint lies in knowledge. Maritime economies are data-intensive. They require continuous measurement of stocks, flows, risks, and environmental thresholds. Yet Mauritius lacks a publicly accessible marine data architecture integrating fisheries, shipping, energy, climate, and trade. Without data, strategy defaults to narrative. Without metrics, accountability dissolves. This reinforces a cycle in which ambition is repeatedly reset rather than cumulatively built.

The Generational Bet and Climate Nexus

The ocean is not a cyclical growth lever, nor a compensatory sector to offset weaknesses elsewhere documented in Sections 36-38. It is a generational bet—one that rewards patience, institutional maturity, and policy consistency, while punishing short-termism and fragmented governance. What distinguishes successful ocean states is not maritime geography alone, but continuity of intent. Ports, marine energy systems, fisheries regeneration, ocean science, and maritime services mature over decades, not electoral cycles.

For Mauritius, this creates sharp tension with a political economy accustomed to visible returns within short timeframes. The risk is not failure by design, but erosion by impatience: initiatives launched without the fiscal, legal, or administrative runway to survive leadership change. The ocean also exposes a deeper question of sovereignty. Effective ocean governance requires the ability to regulate actors more powerful than the state itself—global shipping lines, extractive firms, foreign fishing fleets, insurers, and financiers. This is not merely a technical challenge; it is a test of regulatory courage and enforcement credibility.

Climate change amplifies the stakes, linking directly to vulnerabilities documented in Section 37. As sea levels rise, weather volatility intensifies, and insurance models reprice risk, coastal and island economies will be judged by their adaptive capacity. The ocean economy therefore intersects directly with climate resilience, fiscal sustainability (Section 36), and intergenerational equity. Decisions taken—or deferred—today will shape exposure profiles for decades. Ocean strategy is also climate strategy, and failure to integrate the two represents a structural blind spot.

The Binary Choice

The strategic choice confronting Mauritius is binary. The ocean can be treated as a branding exercise—another narrative layered onto tourism brochures and policy speeches—or as a national project demanding reform, discipline, and endurance. The first option preserves comfort and predictability. The second carries risk, but also the possibility of structural transformation.

From an economic perspective, the most important insight is negative rather than positive: the ocean will not save Mauritius by itself. It cannot compensate for weak productivity, limited innovation, or institutional opacity. But it can magnify strengths if governance improves. In a system capable of coordination, transparency, and execution, maritime domains can anchor new forms of export revenue, scientific capital, and geopolitical relevance. In a system that is not, they become symbolic spaces—invoked often, developed lightly, and forgotten quietly.

Section 39 therefore ends where it began: with capability. The ocean is not a mystery. The constraints are known, the opportunities mapped, and the data gaps identifiable—systematically enumerated in Section 39.4. What remains unresolved is whether the state is willing to build the institutional spine required to turn maritime proximity into lasting economic power. That decision will define not only the future of the ocean economy, but the credibility of Mauritius' development model in the decades ahead.