Jugnauth: IMF Report Undermines Ramgoolam's 'Empty Treasury' Claim

Former Prime Minister and leader of the Militant Socialist Movement (MSM), Pravind Jugnauth, has hit back at the government's much-publicised claim that he left Mauritius's public finances in ruin — pointing to a newly released International Monetary Fund (IMF) technical report that he says calls the figures into question. Speaking at a press conference on Thursday morning, Jugnauth challenged Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam directly: "How many times did Ramgoolam cite Moody's and the IMF to say the treasury was empty? Did Ramgoolam ever come forward to say what the IMF has now found about his own government's so-called 'chiffon marmite'?" — a Mauritian Creole phrase roughly meaning a discredited or manipulated document. **The 'La Kes Vid' Controversy** The dispute centres on what has become known locally as the *"la kes vid"* scandal — Creole for "the empty till." On 10 December 2024, days after taking office following the general election, Prime Minister Ramgoolam made public a report titled *The State of the Economy*, which claimed his predecessor had left a fiscal hole of Rs 164.9 billion in the public finances. The revelation caused significant political uproar and was widely cited by the new government to justify spending constraints. Jugnauth, who served as Prime Minister from 2017 to 2024, has consistently denied the figures are accurate. On Thursday, he sharpened that attack using the IMF's own published findings. **What the IMF Report Says** An IMF technical assistance mission visited Mauritius in March 2025 — just months after the government's December 2024 report was published. The resulting Technical Assistance Report was finalised in June 2025. Jugnauth specifically cited paragraphs 10 and 13 of that document, arguing they show the original figures presented by Ramgoolam were not correct and that the IMF's own team required several months of detailed work before reaching any conclusions. His core argument: if the Rs 164.9 billion figure was so clear-cut, why did IMF experts need months to verify it? He likened Ramgoolam's speed in publishing the December report to Lucky Luke, the Belgian comic-book cowboy famous for drawing his gun faster than his own shadow — implying the Prime Minister acted hastily and without proper verification. **What This Means** This is an intensifying political battle over the credibility of Mauritius's public financial data. The government has used the "empty treasury" narrative as a central justification for its economic agenda since coming to power. If the IMF's technical findings do not fully support the Rs 164.9 billion figure, that could significantly weaken the political and policy foundation built on it. For ordinary Mauritians, the stakes are real: budget decisions, public spending cuts, and economic reform programmes are all being shaped — at least in part — by this disputed diagnosis of the country's finances. The MSM, now in opposition, is clearly building a case that the figure was politically inflated. The government has not yet formally responded to Jugnauth's reading of the IMF report. Source: ION News