Jairaz Pochun POLICIES TO FACILITATE TRADE AND FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN SOUTHERN AFRICA Mr Jairaz Pochun Consultant, Mauritius Introduction This paper deals with policies to facilitate trade and foreign direct investment in southern Africa with special reference to the experience of Mauritius. I would like to begin by making a few introductory remarks. Talking of policies, far from suggest­ing a recipe for developing countries, I propose to provide an overview of some policy measures taken by the government of Mauritius in the last two decades and which, combined with certain external favourable conditions, could be responsible for the unprecedented economic growth in the country. Overall, the experience is of an island economy subjected to many uncertainties from the perspective of growth and policy measures. In the wake of rapid liberalisation of trade, finance and investment in the post­GATT era, the new economic order unleashes a number of challenges, difficulties and opportunities. As the momentum of globalisation accelerates, developing coun­tries will need to make the necessary adjustments to their country policies to take advantage of new, favourable conditions. Economic reforms, in general, would mean undertaking certain profound changes at various levels without the guarantee that they will produce the best results. None­theless, where the right policies have been put in place there are better chances that they will work. Development issues, including those at the level of macro-economic policies, economic cooperation and regional integration for sustained economic growth, will continue to rank high on the economic agenda of nations concerned with the well-being of their peoples. Indeed, many countries are undergoing changes. Integrating into the global economy is no longer an option. The international free­flows of goods and services, capital, labour and technology in the process of globalisation have both hastened the pace of development and made economic ad­justments and policy reorientations necessary. Moreover, international flows of tech­nology, taking various forms of foreign investment, technical assistance and know­how, licensing arrangements and other technological hardware, continue to receive serious attention. Policies to promote these flows also need to be linked with the absorption capacity rate of the recipient. 38