DBM Rate Shock Hits Women Entrepreneurs Hard

Women entrepreneurs in Mauritius have been dealt a severe financial blow following the abolition of the Women Entrepreneur Loan Scheme — a flagship initiative introduced under the 2025-26 Budget — and its replacement under Budget 2026-27 with a fundamentally different lending framework at the Development Bank of Mauritius (DBM). The most jarring change is the collapse of the preferential interest rate. Where borrowers once benefited from a near-unbeatable rate of just 0.5%, they now face a standard rate of 4.75% — an increase that, for some applicants, multiplies their interest burden by close to tenfold. But it is not only the rate hike itself causing outrage. A deeper grievance has emerged around so-called transition cases: applications submitted and fully completed before the new budget took effect, but formally approved by the DBM only after the policy change. According to affected borrowers, the DBM appears to be applying the rate based on the internal approval date rather than the original submission date — effectively penalising women who followed the process correctly and in good faith. This raises critical questions that neither the DBM nor the Ministry of Finance has yet answered publicly. Is there an official ministerial directive governing how transition-period applications should be handled? Did the decision to use approval date rather than submission date originate from the Ministry of Finance, or is it an internal DBM policy choice? And crucially, does this approach violate the basic principle that financial conditions accepted at the time of application should be honoured? From an editorial standpoint, the situation exposes a structural vulnerability in how Mauritius manages policy transitions affecting financial commitments. When a government scheme is wound down mid-cycle, the absence of clear transitional provisions does not merely create administrative confusion — it erodes the very predictability that entrepreneurs rely on when making investment decisions. A woman who planned her business financing around a 0.5% rate and submitted her full dossier under those terms is not simply inconvenienced by a 4.75% rate; she may be forced to restructure or abandon her project entirely. Women-led businesses in Mauritius already face well-documented access-to-finance challenges. Schemes like the Women Entrepreneur Loan Scheme were specifically designed to lower those barriers. The manner in which this scheme has been discontinued — without apparent safeguards for pending applicants — risks undermining confidence in future government-backed financing programmes aimed at women. Until the Ministry of Finance and the DBM issue transparent, written guidance on how transition cases will be treated, affected borrowers remain in limbo, caught between two policy regimes with no clear recourse. Source: ION News