Volume:01, Number:06, Oct-2011 Page 82 www.theinternationaljournal.org Assessing The Formal Social Protection System in Mauritius Harshana Kasseeah & Verena Tandrayen-Ragoobur Mauritius Abstract Mauritius is a welfare state with a wide range of social protection schemes, ranging from free education from pre-primary to tertiary level, free health services, free public transport to the elderly, the disabled and students. It also provides subsidies on basic foodstuffs like rice and flour as well as on cooking gas. However, the social protection system in Mauritius is not an ideal one. Mauritius faced a number of challenges among which inefficient coordination, monitoring and evaluation of the different social protection schemes, overlapping of programs, lack of uniformity in criteria, over coverage, wastage due to duplication of processing, limited information dissemination on availability of existing social protection programs among many others. The objective of this study is to assess the existing social protection projects considered to address the needs of the vulnerable people in Mauritius. We focus on formal social protection provided by the state by investigating the different programmes through the Programme Based Budgeting (PBB) of different Ministries whereby social protection schemes are provided. The effectiveness of the different social protection schemes is analysed in relation to their performance targets. 1. Introduction Countries, households and individuals in Africa have to deal with the instability of the global economy, conflict, disease, vagaries of the weather and climate change. Vulnerability to poverty is high. Social protection therefore enhances the capacity of the poor and vulnerable persons to manage economic and social risks such as unemployment, exclusion, sickness, disability and old age. Social protection represents an essential tool in improving the productive capabilities of poor men and women and enabling them to participate more productively in the country‟s economic growth. The state acts as a provider and protector of its citizens by transferring assets to vulnerable people such as children, women, elderly, disabled, displaced, unemployed, and the sick. Mauritius is a welfare state with a wide range of social protection schemes. It provides free education from pre-primary to tertiary level, free health services, including costly tertiary health care procedures like heart surgery. It also offers free public transport to the elderly, the disabled and students. It provides subsidies on basic foodstuffs like rice and flour as well as on cooking gas. Social protection in Mauritius can be both formal and informal. Formal, government-based social protection is in the form of various contributory and non-contributory benefits paid either on a universal and a means-tested basis. Informal social protection is provided by either the community including social and cultural groups as well as family-based system. The social protection system in Mauritius can be defined as an extensive set of social policies and programmes which provide an extended safety net for the majority of the population. In 2008/09, 21.7 percent of total government expenditure was attributed to social protection. In fact, Mauritius spent about 5.3 percent of its GDP on social protection in 2008/09, which is by far better than many African countries.