Republic of Mauritius- National Strategy for the leather sector presented to key stakeholders

In his address, Minister Bholah highlighted that the National Strategy will serve as a guide for designing policy instruments and activities to support different players in the leather supply chain. He recalled that in April 2018, the first draft of the National Strategy for Leather Value Chain was formulated and circulated to relevant stakeholders for their views and comments following which the report was finalised.

This initiative, he said, was undertaken due to signs of contractions in the number of enterprises and employment rates in the leather sector in Mauritius. According to Statistics Mauritius, he said, Mauritius imported a total value of 377 million and 407 million of leather products for year 2016 and 2017 respectively which he qualified as great loss of economic opportunities for local entrepreneurs.

Minister Bholah stated the leather industry being a lucrative one has enormous potentials to bring considerable gains for the country and needed a new thrust for survival on the global market.  It is time to revamp the leather sector so as to undertake the quantum leap to enter targeted ‘niche’ markets and to explore potentials in high-end finished line leather products through modern technologies, he added.

To this end, the support and guidance of the ALLPI was sought in the commissioning of the National Strategy Paper. He highlighted that Africa can be a good source of raw materials and an exporter of finished goods adding that the ALLPI has highly contributed in identifying challenges and formulating appropriate support mechanisms to allow Mauritius to seize global market opportunities and achieve its full potentials in the leather sector.

For his part, Mr Rabin Rampersad underscored that SME Mauritius Ltd as a key stakeholder is at the forefront of several initiatives being taken in different sectors namely in handicraft, aquaponics and leather. The organisation, he emphasised, is engaged in the dissemination of technical knowledge and expertise as well as providing financial support to entrepreneurs especially those who are commercialising their businesses.

He enumerated several measures taken by SME Mauritius to upscale the business and enterprise sector in Mauritius. They are: creation of a technology hub and clustering system in Coromandel; setting up of the 3D printing centre; construction of a designed laboratory for leather products; and revamping the whole approach to incubations.