PMT and Targeting
for the Social Aid Reform in Mauritius
Christophe Muller
Consultant
United Nations Development Programme
October 2010
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to many executives and agents from the Ministry of Social Security, the Central
Statistics Office, the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development and the UNDP for their
support. Special thanks are due to the SRM Team, Mrs I. Jugganaikloo, Mrs. S. Vithilingum,
Mrs. N. Ramjane among others and the UNDP local consultants assisting them, Mr. D. Bundhoo
and Miss M. Rucktooa. Without all these collaborators engaged in this collective work, this
report could not have been produced.
Executive Summary
In this report we discuss the Reform of the Social Aid programme of Mauritius. On the one hand,
we synthetize some of the information produced at the SRM Unit. Statistical tables on current
and future beneficiaries are presented, including some budget tables. On the other hand, we
develop the reflexion on this reform through policy simulations and recommendations.
A few issues need to be dealt with for ensuring the success of the reform:
(1) More rigour is needed in dealing with statistics used to justify the reform.
(2) The ‘additional conditions’ should be considered as a device to protect some losers of the
reform, not as a central policy objective. The focus of the social policy on the poor should not be
lost of sight.
(3) Immediate and massive empowerment of the losers of the reform is impossible for lack of
current capacity at MSI, and probably for a few years. There is no immediate capacity in the
country for dealing with a controled ‘Grand Reform’ of the social system. However, a limited
reform centered on the PMT implementation is still possible.
(4) More information is needed about current or potential beneficiaries in Rodrigues or for
Immediate Payment cases to clarify their participation in the PMT.
The main policy recommendations are as follows:
Decide if the population of the poor is still a priority. Not implementing PMT in order to
overprotect these populations will amount to sacrifice the interest of the poor. Neglecting
them to serve other destitute categories instead would be a major policy change that can
only be decided at the top goverment level.
However, if the priority given to the poor is confirmed, the sooner the PMT can be
implemented, even with imperfections, the better. At the moment the very low coverage of
the poor by social aid (5% for the Regular cases in Mauritius Island) is hurting them.
Delaying PMT implementation implies a continuation of such damage to the poor in
contrast with post-PMT coverage of the poor of 30%.
Apply PMT as soon as possible to Mauritius Island and Regular social aid cases
Improve use of statistical information related to the reform.
Introduce the Additional Conditions designed by the SRM Unit to protect some
beneficiary categories that are bound to lose from the reform.
Collect information to better monitor current and potential beneficiaries for the
‘Immediate Payment’ cases and for Rodrigues.
Make transparent the process of budget allocation for transfers, by subcategories, so that
the PMT threshold can be adjusted.
Associate MSI to the protection of current beneficiaries during the transition period of
PMT implementation. There are many unspent funds of MSI because the empowerment
capacity is no longer in place. These funds could be used to compensate ‘losers’ of the
reform for a limited period.
Group Income Support and Social Aid under the same PMT program.
Monitor the Immediate Payment cases and design selection rules to deal with the most
dramatic situations of these IP cases only. Continue to serve these IP cases, instead of
substituting them with PMT, until more is known about them and it is clear that they can
be discarded.
On the whole, with the additional conditions and possible complement budget from MSI to
compensate losers of the reform, the benefits of moving from the current social aid system to
PMT for the poor very largely offset the inconvenients suffered by a few losers of the reform. So,
we recommend implementing the PMT as soon as possible.
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
1. Introduction 3
2. The Additional Conditions for Accessing Social Aid
3. Who are the Losers?
4. The Immediate Cases and Rodrigues
5. Budget Issues
6. Policy Simulations
7. Policy Conclusions and Recommendations
Appendix A1: References
1. Introduction
The Social Register of Mauritius has been designed as a large database of potential and actual
social programme beneficiaries. It will assist the Ministry of Social Security (from now ‘The
Ministry’ or MSS) in identifying the beneficiaries of each programme and deciding the level of
assistance for each beneficiary. It will also be used to assess social programmes and improve
their performance.
The project of the ‘Social Register for Mauritius’ (SRM) is under the responsibility of the
Ministry. In this project, the Ministry is supported by the Ministry of Finance and Economy and
by the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The United Nations Development Program is providing
technical assistance.
The objectives of the project are:
- Managing the social programmes in an integrated way;
- Enhancing the targeting performance of programmes;
- Designing a unified approach to welfare and targeting criteria;
- Analysing cyclical and structural poverty reduction policies.
The SRM database will be used for a variety of purposes, not only for payment of allowances to
beneficiaries, but also for economic analyses, anti-poverty monitoring, and establishment of
proxy-means transfers schemes that would improve the targeting efficiency of Social Aid and
other social programmes.
Thus, the Mauritian government is taking the lead in modernizing its social system around the
social databases of the country. This is made possible by first emulating statistical and
organisation methods used in industrial economies, such as in European countries with a well-
developed social system, but also by taking advantage of the sophisticated methods that have
been developed for fighting poverty in developing economies.
The SRM will also bear important consequences for assessing the budgetary burden of social
systems and social reforms. Least, but not last, it should allow substantial savings of public funds
by improving the efficiency of social transfers in the country.
In this report we explore ways of improve the reform of social aid programs, which is based on
Proxy-Means Tests that have been proposed for Mauritius Social Aid (Muller, 2010). We are
responding to a government request, under extremely tight deadline. This request emanates from
MSS with the view of protecting some categories of current beneficiaries that would not be
entitled to receive benefits when PMT is implemented.
The requested information had to be provided before September 12, in order to be timely
included in the budget process for the social aid reform. These additional studies are aimed at:
(a) improving the efficiency and accuracy of the PMT so as to take advantage of additional
information;
(b) incorporating further conditions for the inclusion/exclusion of beneficiaries of the PMT.
These conditions should emerge from the long-standing experience of the Ministry of
Social Security in managing its social programs;
(c) studying alternative scenarios of the PMT reform through statistical simulations so as to
provide a range of possibilities to political decision makers;
(d) studying strategies to deal with current Social Aid beneficiaries bound to lose their
benefits under the current system.
(e) exploring the potential for saving funds, thus relating the PMT reform to the elaboration
of the national budget.
These deliveries were conditional on the following items:
- (1) Some of these dimensions of the analysis will be treated immediately in order to reach
the deadline, with just a few immediate simulations, while further analyses, in particular
concerning the budget could be carried out later on.
- (2) The necessary information for these study is rapidly collected from the Ministry early
September. A list of short term information needs was established for this.
- (3) Disturbances are kept at the minimum so that the SRM staff can be fully involved in
urgent tasks with the full support of UNDP local consultants.
In practice, condition (2) was never fully met. Only a limited part of this necessary information
could be gathered in such a short periof by MSS agents and provided just a few days before the
report deadline instead of early September. Moreover, Condition (3) could not be implemented
by administrations, with other tasks massively diverting the time and resources of the SRM team
and UNDP local consultants.
However, considering the major pressure put on MSS agents in this time of reform, these
conditions were probably impossible to reach, despite remarkable efforts by the MSS team and
their local consultants. Although, we could have dismissed the assignment at this stage, we found
it more useful to pursue with the work, with a few immediate simulations on the line of (1),
rather than to stop and wait for favourable study conditions to be established.
Moreover, the current political and administrative context about the reform seems to be volatile.
Obviously, the structural dimensions of the reforms are not yet stabilized. We tried to orient our
work in order to provide some directions of reflection in order to remind fundamental issues and
improve effort coordination.
This document reports the results of our analyses under urgency. Finally, note that all the
statistical results in this document are to be seen as very preliminary, as there was not time to
check them fully under such short notice.
In Section 2, we examine the additional conditions to impose on the selection of beneficiaries for
social aid. In Section 3, we describe the potential losers among social aid beneficiaries following
the PMT implementation. In Section 4, we discuss the Immediate beneficiaries. In Section 5, we
discuss budget issues. In Section 5, we report on policy simulations. Finally, in Section 6, we
propose policy conclusions and recommendations.
Abbreviations:
CSO: Central Statistics Office.
The Ministry or MSS: The Ministry of Social Security.
UNDP: United Nations Development Programme.
SRM: Social Register of Mauritius.
MOFEE: Ministry of Finance and Economic Empowerment.
LCS: Living Conditions Survey.
CS: Complementary Survey.
DCP: Decentralized Cooperation Program.
MSI: The Ministry of Social Integration.
2. The Additional Conditions for Beneficiary Selection
2.1. The issue at hand
MSS already avails of new PMT rules to select beneficiaries and compute amounts of benefits to
each beneficiary. They are ready to be used and presented in Muller (2010).
However, the PMT formulae do not need to be the only information used in deciding of access to
social aid and the amount of benefits transferred. As a matter of fact, it was found desirable to
mobilise the huge experience accumulated in MSS on how to manage social systems in order to
enhance the performance of PMT. In particular, it would be a mistake not to use safe and verified
information that all social officers know to be useful.
In that situation, additional conditions could be incorporated in order to include or exclude
beneficiaries according to some of their observable characteristics, even if these characteristics
are not currently available in the SRM data. In particular:
- More attention could be devoted to the characteristics of the dwelling so that households
living in dire lodging conditions be included, even if their PMT score is too high to have
them directly included. For example, households living in dwellings with roof and walls
made of corrugated tin and wood should be examined in order to assess their conditions.
Inversely, households living in obviously wealthy estates should not be included,
whatever the result of the PMT formula.
- Outdoor localisation of toilets, or even having no toilets at all, seems to be an obvious
sign that the corresponding households should have to be covered by social aid.
- Absence of any bathing facilities also seems to be a good reason for including households
in social aid, whatever their PMT score.
- A similar criterion concerns households getting their water from river, well or some
public fountain or neighbour. They probably should be included in social aid anyway.
In any case, all the above conditions are mere suggestions that should be assessed by social
officers themselves.
In this section, we shall report proposals of additional conditions emerging from MSS experience
and reflexions.
This is not to imply that the same categories of beneficiaries than the ones currently in use
should be kept. Indeed, the current categories lead to dramatically low coverage of the poor.
However, exceptionally and obviously destitute households in these categories could be
considered for additional investigation of their situation.
We first present the current subprograms in social aid in the following table as described for the
SRM project.
Social Aid and other direct transfers of the MSS National Solidarity Programme1
Programme Objective/Rationale of programme
Type
Me
ans
test
ed
?
Current eligibility criteria Future eligibility criteria Complementary
Survey
Proposed empowerment / integration measures*
Imm
ed
iate
Re
gula
r
Official Informal PMT Addt conditions No. %
Social Aid in cash
Medical
Financial assistance to a person who is temporarily or permanently incapable of supporting himself/herself and his dependents due to:
physical/mental impairment Y Y Y Medical Certificate from Min of Health
Enquiries: employment, informal activity, living conditions, vehicle ownership
PMT Improved Medical Boarding; any disability
4 497 33,77 PF, EM, SEP(ii), SFSE, CSR203, CSR302
Abandoned women abandonment by partner Y Y Y Summon by MSS (but rarely used)
Enquiries: employment, informal activity, living conditions, partner, vehicle ownership; delaying tactics; referral to Court
PMT None 3 746 28,13 PF, EM, SEP(i), SFSE, CSR201, CSR206, CSR207, CSR602
Unmarried mother2 an unmarried mother (not living with a partner, and usually below the age of 18)
Y Y Y Medical Certificate to certify pregnancy
None Not applicable2 Not applicable 225 1,69 CSR206, CSR207, CSR303, CSR602
Imprisonment imprisonment of head of household
Y Y Y Certificate from Court; Discharge Certificate from Prisons
Enquiries: employment, informal activity, living conditions, other partner, vehicle ownership
PMT None 305 2,29 PF, EM, SEP(i), SFSE, CSR206
Partner dead/missing/disappeared death or disappearance of partner
Y Y Y Death Certificate; Certificate from Police
Enquiries: employment, informal activity, living conditions, other partner, vehicle ownership
PMT None 144 1,08 PF, EM, SEP(i), SFSE, CSR206
Sudden loss of employment3 sudden loss of employment for > 6 months
Y Y Y Letter from employer; Registration at Employment Office
Enquiries: employment, informal activity, living conditions, vehicle ownership, if spouse working
Not applicable3 Not applicable 6 0,05 PF, MC, EM, SEP(i), CSR201
Abandoned Child Financial assistance to the guardian of an abandoned child under the age of 15, or 20 if at school or disabled
Y Y N None Enquiries on decent living conditions for child
PMT None 1 125 8,45 CSR207, CSR303, CSR602
BRP-Rental allowance Financial assistance to a recipient of Basic Pension (BRP, BWP, BOP or BIP) living alone and paying rent
Y Y Y Receiving a Basic Pension; Rent book from landlord ; living alone
Enquiries: whether really living alone
PMT None 380 2,85 CSR208
Carer's allowance Financial assistance to a head of household who has a child under the age of 18 suffering from HIV or severely handicapped, and has multiple congenital deformities
Y Y Y Medical Certificate and statement of emoluments of yearly earnings <= Rs250,000
None PMT Medical Certificate, disability 2 410 18,10 SEP(ii), CSR203
Ex-Gratia Financial assistance to a head of household who has a child under the age of 18 suffering from a severe disablement
Y Y Y Medical Certificate and statement of emoluments of yearly earnings < =Rs 150,000
None PMT Medical Certificate, disability 155 1,16 SEP(ii), CSR203
Multiple birth Financial assistance to meet expenses in case of multiple births during one confinement
Y Y Y Statement of emoluments of yearly earnings <= Rs150,000
None PMT None 228 1,71 CSR303, CSR602
Additional Social Aid Financial assistance to a BRP recipient who has insufficient means to support himself and his dependents (e.g. dependents are attending school/university)
Y Y Y Receiving BRP Enquiries: employment, informal activity, living conditions, vehicle ownership
PMT None 18 0,14 CSR207, CSR208, CSR602
Social Aid in kind
Spectacles To provide spectacles to any person (or dependent) who is entitled to Social Aid or a recipient of basic pension who would have qualified for Social Aid
NA NA Y Medical prescription from Mins of Health
Enquiries: employment, informal activity, living conditions, vehicle ownership
PMT None NA NA Not applicable
Dentures To provide financial assistance for the costs of dentures for a BRP recipient who has insufficient means to support his livelihood
Y NA Y Medical prescription from Min of Health
Enquiries: employment, informal activity, living conditions, vehicle ownership
PMT None NA NA Not applicable
Hearing aid To provide hearing aids to a person who is entitled for Social Aid or to needy persons
NA NA Y Medical prescription from Min of Health
Enquiries: employment, informal activity, living conditions, vehicle ownership
PMT None NA NA Not applicable
Wheelchair4 To provide wheelchairs to any person who is in need of a wheelchair NA NA N Medical prescription from medical practitioner
Not applicable Not applicable4 Not applicable NA NA Not applicable
Other direct transfers under MSS National Solidarity programme
Income support Financial assistance to needy households to purchase rice and flour NA Y Y Recipients of (i) Social Aid, (ii) UHR, and (iii) basic pension who would qualify for Social Aid; (iv) monthly electricity consumption < 75Kwh
None PMT None NA NA
Unemployment Hardship Relief3 Financial assistance to an unemployed head of household whose resources are insufficient to support himself and his dependents
Y Y Y Registration card from Employment Office
Enquiries: employment, informal activity, living conditions, vehicle ownership
Not applicable3 Not applicable 78 0,59 PF, MC, EM, SEP(i), CSR201
Allowance to centenarians One-off gift to any person who has reached the age of 100 NA NA N Birth certificate None Not applicable Not applicable NA NA Not applicable
Assistance to professional fishermen To compensate fishers who are unable to carry out fishing activities due to bad weather and close season
NA NA N Registered fisher; card stamped every month
None Not applicable Not applicable NA NA Not applicable
Funeral grants One-off financial assistance due to the death of a beneficiary of Social Aid or any of his dependents or a recipient of basic pension who would have qualified for Social Aid
Y NA Y Death certificate; Means test on deceased
None PMT None NA NA Not applicable
Repatriation expenses Financial assistance to Mauritians abroad who have insufficient means to return to Mauritius (beneficiaries have to refund later)
NA NA Y Means test by relevant Mauritian Embassy
Enquiries abroad Not applicable Not applicable NA NA Not applicable
Relief to Mauritians abroad Financial assistance to Mauritians abroad who have insufficient means to support themselves
NA NA Y Means test by relevant Mauritian Embassy
Enquiries abroad Not applicable Not applicable NA NA Not applicable
Subsidy on SC and HSC exams fees To refund exams fees for SC and HCS students coming from needy households
y NA Y Recipients of (i) Social Aid, (ii) UHR, and (iii) basic pension who would qualify for Social Aid; (iv) monthly income < Rs 8500 if only 1 child is sitting for exams; (v) monthly income < Rs 11,000 if 2 children are sitting for exams
Enquiries for cases (iv) and (v): employment, informal activity, living conditions, vehicle ownership
PMT NA NA Not applicable
1: Source of info: (i) Legal documents; (ii) Official publications; (iii) brainstorming sessions with some 225 MSS officers; (iv) meetings/working sessions with higher MSS officers
2: Very sensitive; need to be treated outside PMT framework
3: Is being replaced by Transitional Unemployment Benefit (TUB)
4: No means test for those in need of a wheelchair
*: Acronym for Empowerment Programmes
PF: Placement et Formation - eligible for young who are 16 and above; the unemployed; persons without any training/skill; persons who have lost their job
MC: Migration circulaire - provides opportunities to work abroad for a specificied time period, and for selected activities - eligible for those above 21 years and who have been already working
EM: Espace des Metiers - provides services on (i) how to choose an activity, (ii) which training to attend, (iii) how to look for a job, (iv) how to create and run one's own small business
SEP: Special Entrepreneurship Programme - Provides assistance to :(i) creation and development of micro-enterprises in manufacturing, agricultural, agri-business and handicraft, (ii) Socio-economique empowerment of disbaled persons
SFSE: Soutien aux Femmes Sans Emploi: Provides assistance for the setting up of a micro-business; mentoring and follow-up
CSR: Corporate Social Responsibility:
CSR Code 201: Unemployment / Retrenchment
CSR Code 203: Support to and integration of people with disabilities
CSR Code 206: Gender issues and Women Empowerment; Prevention of violence against women
CSR Code 207: Youth and Children
CSR Code 208: Elderly care
CSR Code 302: Non-Communicable diseases
CSR Code 303: Maternal and neo-natal care
CSR Code 602: Promote learning/education (starting from pre-primary up to tertiary/vocational)
2.2. The current eligibility criteria
A good starting point is to know exactly what is done in practice, beyond what has been
published in the law. We asked the SRM team to establish an accurate description of the current
eligibility conditions and how they are practically implemented. The results, although still rough
and incomplete, show the considerable progress in analytical capacity reached by the SRM Unit.
What we are interested here, are the additional conditions formally or informally applied by MSS
agents, notably during the enquiries they routinely carry out in order to check the situation of
applications. Indeed, some of these informal conditions could be made compulsory in order to
improve the selection or rescue of beneficiaries, even under a PMT system. We obtain the
following picture by type of application reason.
(a) Medical:
When a claim for social aid under any application reason, except funeral grant and wheelchair, is
registered at regional office, a visit has to be carried out by MSS agent at the claimant’s
premises. First, they ascertain that the applicant is residing at the given address and they carry
out an enquiry.
If the applicant is living in very poor living condition, described as ‘shabby dwelling
construction material such as corrugated iron sheet/concrete’, this will not affect his means test.
However, if MSS agents find out that the applicant is living in good condition, such as ‘Storyed
house, luxury amenities-refrigerator, televisión with LCD screen, parabol/Canal+, Antenna’, they
will investigate further to check if there are any hidden resources by looking and asking
questions about the beneficiary’s means to afford all these goods. MSS agent can have checks
made at the Registration Office (to verify ownership of land)/Sugar Insurance Fund Board (to
verify whether deriving income from sugar cane cultivation). Note that most variables describing
the above conditions are not available in the CS or HBS dasta, which prevent accurate statistical
analyses of their impact.
MSS agents try to find out if the applicant derives any income from any informal activity. For
example, they check if he has a small business at home like selling ‘dhool puri or roti at home, or
selling home vegetables, or whether the wife is doing some seamstressing work at home. They
also check if the applicant has any child under 20, working and deriving any income. As in the
means test for social aid we take into consideration income derived by child under 20.
During the site visit, the MSS agents also try to find out whether the applicant is owner of any
vehicle. For example, he can be owner of a van or a taxi, a car. He may be working as hawker or
taxi driver. MSS agent can have checks made at the National Transport Authority to verify if he
is owner of a vehicule or holder of a taxi/van/lorry permit to carry out business.
These practices shows the general picture of MSS agents investigating and checking about
applicants whereabouts and situations. We shall not systematically repeat the details of these
activities for all application reasons, although it is easy to understand that the checks done for the
‘Medical’ application reason are also often done for other application reasons.
(b) Abandoned women
The enquiries and investigations on employment, informal activity, living conditions, vehicle
ownership and other details are the same as above. Moreover, delaying tactics are employed to
discourage insincere applicants.
When an application for social aid is registered at MSS office under reason code ‘Abandoned
Woman’ the applicant must produce name and address of her ex –partner, so that the latter can
be summoned at office by MSS agent. Then, face to face interview between the claimant and the
exp-partener is organised in order to confirm abandonment and try to bring reconciliation.
However, most of the time reconciliation fails and the claimant is financially assisted.
Very often these applicants produce false names and addresses or state that they do not know ex-
partner’s address/whereabouts. In that situation, the case is assessed and generally financially
assisted.
When the ex partner is in employment and has acknowledged children, claimant is advised to sue
ex-partner for alimony. However, when legal case is lodged, its outcome is never known by MSS.
The applicant may even be receiving alimony (alimony is considered as an income in the means
test). Sometimes a call from MSS hierarchy is received to expedite matters, before case is even
referred to court (that is, to effect payment). In this situation an improvement would be obtained
by MSS agents sending a list of beneficiaries with their ID numbers to court so that court
informed MSS about the final judgement.
During site visits, MSS agents try to ascertain that applicant is really abandoned and is not living
with another partner. They call at claimant’s premises and ask for the partner instead of claimant.
However, this is only a procedure since MSS agents are not able to prove anything.
( c) Unmarried mother
When a claim for social aid under application reason “unmarried mother” is registered at
regional office, a visit is carried out by MSS agents at the claimant’s premises. They first
ascertain that the applicant is residing at the given address and perform an investigation. As the
claimant is usually under 18 years old, MSS agents try to know with whom she is living. They
check if she is not living with parents, in a home or with relatives.
(d) Imprisonment
First, the same type of investigations as above is implemented. Then, during site visit, MSS
agewnts try to ascertain that the applicant is not living with another partner, as above by asking
for the partner.
( e) Sudden loss of employment
The same investigations as above are carried out.
(f) Abandonned child
When a claim for social aid under application reason ‘abandoned child’ is registered at regional
office, a visit has is carried out by MSS agents at the claimant’s premises. They first ascertain
that the applicant is residing at the given address and then carry out an investigation. They check
about the whereabouts of parents, whether parents are in prison, or if the child is abandoned by
irresponsible parents. They try to find wether the parents are not living under the same roof as
the abandoned child. MSS Agent visit the applicant’s premises to see the living condition of the
child. For example, they search whether there is a bed for that child, a desk where the child can
do his homeworks. They check child’s personal belongings. That way, MSS agents can be sure
that the abandoned child is actually living with the guardian and not with his parents.
(g) Rent Allowance. (Fore beneficiaries of Basic Retirement pension, basic widow’s pension, basic
invalidity’s pension and basic orphan pension)
Same investigations as above are undertaken. Moreover, MSS Agent visits the applicant’s
premises to see whether the applicant is really living alone. They check the number of beds and
whether there is hints at the presence of another person.
(h) Carer’s allowance
The same type of investigaton as above are implemented. However, what is specific to this
applicatin type is the financial assistance to parents who have a child under the age of 18
suffering from HIV or severely handicapped, or has multiple congenital deformities. The carer’s
allowance is paid to the parents to meet additional expenses incurred on behalf of sick child, In
that case, the agents check medical certificates and statements of emoluments of yearly earnings
below RS. 250,000.
(i) Ex-Gratia
The same investigations as above are undertaken. This application type is specific to parents who
have a child under the age of 18 suffereing from severe disability. Then, MSS agents check
medical certificates and statements of emoluments of yearly earnings below RS. 150,000.
(j) Multiple Birth
This scheme corresponds to financial assistance to parents in order to help them meet expenses
during a period of confinement after multiple birth. The same investigations as above are
undertaken. MSS agents check birth certificates of babies and statements of emoluments of
yearly earnings under RS. 150,000.
(k) Additional social aid
This scheme corresponds to financial assistance to a BRP recipient who has insufficient means to
support himself and his dependents. For example, several dependents may be attending school or
university. The same investigations as above are undertaken. However, there are only 18 cases in
this application that should be eliminated.
(l) Social Aid in kind
(m) Income support
(n) Unemployment hardship relief
In all three cases, similar types of investigation as above are undertaken.
(o) Allowance to centenarians
A complete report on the centenarian is done by MSS Agent and it is not means tested. This
report covers family background, number of children, likes and dislikes, eating habits, past
activity. This is only for information, not for selection.
(p) Assistance to professional fishermen
(q) Relief to Mauritian Abroad
(r) Repatriation expenses
In the last three cases, the assessment of applicants for these schemes are not made by MSS.
(s) Funeral grants
There is no visit by MSS Agents. However, MSS agents implement a means test on the
deceased person. They try to find out what was the past activity of deceased – as per statement
given by applicant. No inquirement on applicant means.
(t) Subsidies on HSC and SC Exam fees
These schemes are in the form of refunds for exam fees. The same investigations as above are
undertaken. Moreover, written evidences that the students are sitting for exams are requested and
various means tests are implemented.
2.3. New additional conditions
We now move to additional conditions that were suggested by MSS agents in order to
include/exclude applicants, irrelevantly from the result of the PMT criterion.
The additional conditions are of two type:
- The additional conditions leading to exclude applicants that would be included according to the
pure PMT criterion. They are useful to limit fraud and leakage of benefit funds.
- The additional conditions leading to inclusion of applicants who would be excluded according to
the pure PMT criterion. They are useful to protect very destitute households that have not been
picked up by the PMT formula.
These additional conditions were obtained in several stages. First, the set of current informal
checking practices was clarified and put on paper, as shown in the previous sub-section. Second,
a large ‘brainstorming session’ was organised with many MSS agents from all over the country.
Then, the SRM Unit synthetised and developped these conditions, organising them by
Application Reason. Finally, we undertook many iterations to clarify further these conditions and
extract the usable information from all this research. At various stages there were some feedback
from MSS hierarchy and MSS experts as to the relevance of the proposed condtions. Clearly,
more could be done in this direction of improvement. However, this is already a success that
something was produced at all under such urgency.
Obviously, the work on additional conditions depended on the policy needs perceived by MSs.
The direction of reform followed by MSS seems to be that seriously disadvantaged current
beneficiaries who could not be protected should be redirected to empowerment programs. That
way, there is limited motivation for additional inclusion conditions for middle age or active
persons who are able to work or to study at school. Then, most additional conditions we could
collect and organise in such a short notice have to deal with persons who are young (children,
young mothers..) or rather close to retirement age.
The conditions are described below by application reason, along with some basic example
explaning them. The codes for the activity variable (activ) and the ‘application reason’ variable
(reason) are indicated as they appear in CS files.
1. Medical:
Either condition1 or condition2:
a) Condition1: A single, non-headed unemployed male/female, aged between 45 and
59 years old, who is sick and is a beneficiary.
Condition Variables used in CS (Let’s take an individual named Mary.)
Single mari == 8 We are targeting bachelors and spinsters.
Non-headed rel != 1 Mary should not be head.
Usually Mary is living with a relative that is well – off.
Unemployed activ == 6|activ == 9|activ==10|active==11 Mary is unable to work due to
sickness.
activ == 6 means homemaker
activ == 9 means Not working but looking for work
activ==10 means disabled/invalid
activ==11 means other
Aged 45-59 age >44 & age <60
Any individual below the age of 45 should be empowered to work.
After 45, the probability of acquiring a job is difficult.
Sick reason == 5 Mary is certified sick by the MSS medical board.
Beneficiary ismem ==1 Mary is the sole beneficiary.
b) Condition2: An unemployed male/female head, aged between 55 and 59 years
old, who is sick and is a beneficiary.
Condition Variables used in CS Let’s take an individual named John.
Head rel == 1 John has a family and he is the bread winner.
Unemployed activ == 6|activ == 8|activ==10|active==11
Unemployed John cannot work since he is sick.
activ == 6 means homemaker
activ == 8 means retired
activ==10 means disabled/invalid
activ==11 means other
Aged 55-59 age >54 & age <60
He cannot be empowered and/or work above the age of 55.
Sick reason == 5 Sick
John is certified sick by the MSS medical board.
Beneficiary ismem ==1 Beneficiary
John and dependants are beneficiaries.
2. Unemployment Hardship Relief
Condition: No additional condition
3. Abandoned women
Condition: No additional condition
4. Unmarried mother
Condition:
a) Condition: An unmarried mother aged between 11 and 18 years old, who is a
beneficiary.
Condition Variables used in CS Why Let’s take an individual named Anna.
Unmarried mother reason == 13 We are targeting “fille – mere”
Aged 11-18 age>10 & age <19
Any individual between the age 11-18 is considered a child.
After 19 they should be empowered to work.
Beneficiary ismem ==1 Anna and child are the beneficiaries.
5. Imprisonment
Condition: No additional condition
6. Additional Social Aid
Condition: No additional condition
7. Abandoned Child
Condition: No additional condition
8. BRP – Rental Allowance
Condition: No additional condition
9. Carer’s Allowance
Condition: Pmt should not be applied to this reason code. Take all cases.
Indeed, MSS is trying to help non- poor families benefit under this programme.
There’s an income ceiling of Rs 250000/yearly.
10. Ex- Gratia
Condition: Pmt should not be applied to this reason code. Take all cases.
MSS is trying to help non- poor families benefit under this programme.
There’s an income ceiling of Rs 150000/yearly.
11. Multiple Birth
Condition: No additional condition
12. Sudden Loss of Employment
Condition: No additional condition
13. Partner dead/missing/disappear
Condition: No additional condition
A few remarks are worth adding to these conditions.
(a) Ex gratia or Carer’s allowance:
Any regular beneficiary of social aid having a child under 18 medically certified
sick/handicapped would most probably qualify to receive Ex gratia or carer’s allowance
as the case may be. In its endeavour to help more families, Government has introduced
new eligibility criteria.
The ceiling of yearly earnings ≤ Rs250,000 (Carer’s allowance) & ≤ Rs150,000 (Ex-
gratia), to help non-poor families benefit from these assistances.
However, there is no yearly revision of these ceilings, which means that authorities
want to limit the number of non-poor families. This is a point that has to be taken into
consideration when the new rules are to be proposed.
(b) Medical
It seems important to distinguish between mild and severe cases when deciding to
exclude applicants under the reason medical. This could be done by MSS medical board.
These cases would have to be given financial assistance temporarily for the period of
incapacity that is stated on the medical certificate. In practice, they often end up as
permanent beneficiaries. Then, MSS medical board should be able to eliminate some
cases by checking the duration of the illness.
1
The two additional conditions for ‘Medical’ that have been proposed correstpond to
unemployed adults who could not be empowered considering their age. These persons
may be suffering from chronic illness. Then, it is reasonable to keep them under social
aid, even if they do not pass PMT.
Note that beneficiaries who would be benefiting from severe illness would qualify for
basic invalidity pension instead of social aid. Therefore, there is no danger of excluding
them while applying PMT to social aid.
( c) Unmarried mothers
In principle, all beneficiaries under this application reason should be aged less than 18
years. In practice, there are beneficiaries aged from 11 to 54 years under this reason.
2
3. Who are the losers?
3.1. Frequency table for eligible and ineligible cases
The following tables inform on numbers and percentages of eligible and ineligible
beneficiaries (respectively households and individuals) under the modified PMT rule
incorporating the new additional rules.
Obviously, there are four important application reasons: Medical, Abandoned Women,
Abandoned Child and Carer’s allowance. The seeach for additional conditions
concentrated on these cases, although it was realised that Abandoned Women could
easily follow various empowerment programs. On the other hand, the application
reasons Ex-Gratia and Carer’s Allowance seems serious enough to justify systematic
preservation of these beneficiaries.
The chosen additional conditions are influential for the selected application reasons, as
show the comparaison of Tables 1 and 2. However, on the whole the impact on the total
number of beneficiaries is rather minor.
3
Table 1 - Distribution of beneficiaries, households and individuals by application reason and sub-categories under PMT, CS 2008
Social Aid
Complementary Survey 2008
Beneficiaries Households Individuals
Not eligible1
Eligible1 Total Not
eligible1 Eligible1 Total
Not eligible1
Eligible1 Total
No. % No. % No. No. % No. % No. No. % No. % No. %
Application Reason
Medical 2
484 55,2 2 013 44,8 4 497 2
481 55,2 2
013 44,8 4 494 6 567 55,2 5 335 44,8 11
902 100,0
PMT only 894 19,9 894 19,9 2 967 24,9
Unemployed single non-head aged 45 -59 yrs 170 3,8 170 3,8 474 4,0
Unemployed head aged 55 -59 yrs 949 21,1 949 21,1 1 894 15,9
Unemploy.Hardship Relief 64 82,1 14 17,9 78 64 82,1 14 17,9 78 232 75,1 77 24,9 309 100,0
Abandoned women 1
720 45,9 2 026 54,1 3 746 1
720 45,9 2
026 54,1 3 746 5 372 41,7 7 502 58,3 12
874 100,0
Unmarried mother 80 35,6 145 64,4 225 79 35,3 145 64,7 224 293 36,8 504 63,2 797 100,0
PMT only 122 54,2 122 54,5 409 51,3
Teenagers aged 11- 18 yrs 23 10,2 23 10,3 95 11,9
Imprisonment 184 60,3 121 39,7 305 176 60,5 115 39,5 291 650 54,7 538 45,3 1 188 100,0
Additional Social Aid 14 77,8 4 22,2 18 14 77,8 4 22,2 18 42 72,4 16 27,6 58 100,0
Abandoned Child 619 55,0 506 45,0 1 125 506 61,6 316 38,4 822 1 700 58,4 1 211 41,6 2 911 100,0
BRP-Rental allowance 165 43,4 215 56,6 380 165 43,4 215 56,6 380 165 43,4 215 56,6 380 100,0
Carer's allowance2 0 0,0 2 410 100,0 2 410 0 0,0 2
350 100,0 2 350 0 0,0 9 754 100,0 9 754 100,0
Ex-Gratia2 0 0,0 155 100,0 155 0 0,0 154 100,0 154 0 0,0 631 100,0 631 100,0
Multiple birth 127 55,7 101 44,3 228 69 57,5 51 42,5 120 324 55,6 259 44,4 583 100,0
Sudden loss of employment 5 83,3 1 16,7 6 5 83,3 1 16,7 6 22 88,0 3 12,0 25 100,0
Partner dead/missing/disap 77 53,5 67 46,5 144 77 53,5 67 46,5 144 223 49,2 230 50,8 453 100,0
Total Social Aid 5
539 41,6 7 778 58,4 13 317 5
356 41,8 7
471 58,2 12 827 15
590 37,2 26
275 62,8 41
865 100,0
Note 1 & 2: Eligibility assessment based on CS data using PMT + subprograms on Medical & Unmarried mother, except for Carer's Allowance and Ex-Gratia where all beneficiaries have been included.
4
Table 2 - Distribution of beneficiaries, households and individuals by application reason under PMT, CS 2008
Social Aid
Complementary Survey 2008
Beneficiaries Households Individuals
Not eligible1
Eligible1 Total Not
eligible1 Eligible1 Total
Not eligible1
Eligible1 Total
No. % No. % No. No. % No. % No. No. % No. % No. %
Application Reason
Medical 3603 80,1 894 19,9 4 497 3600 80,1 894 19,9 4494 8 935 75,1 2 967 24,9 11 902 100,0
Unemploy.Hardship Relief 64 82,1 14 18,0 78 64 82,1 14 18,0 78 232 75,1 77 24,9 309 100,0
Abandoned women 1 720 45,9 2 026 54,1 3 746 1 720 45,9 2 026 54,1 3746 5 372 41,7 7 502 58,3 12 874 100,0
Unmarried mother 103 45,8 122 54,2 225 102 45,5 122 54,5 224 388 48,7 409 51,3 797 100,0
Imprisonment 184 60,3 121 39,7 305 176 60,5 115 39,5 291 650 54,7 538 45,3 1 188 100,0
Additional Social Aid 14 77,8 4 22,2 18 14 77,8 4 22,2 18 42 72,4 16 27,6 58 100,0
Abandoned Child 619 55,0 506 45,0 1 125 506 61,6 316 38,4 822 1 700 58,4 1 211 41,6 2 911 100,0
BRP-Rental allowance 165 43,4 215 56,6 380 165 43,4 215 56,6 380 165 43,4 215 56,6 380 100,0
Carer's allowance 1 632 67,7 778 32,3 2 410 1 597 68,0 753 32,0 2350 6 339 65,0 3 415 35,0 9 754 100,0
Ex-Gratia 101 65,2 54 34,8 155 100 64,9 54 35,1 154 386 61,2 245 38,8 631 100,0
Multiple birth 127 55,7 101 44,3 228 69 57,5 51 42,5 120 324 55,6 259 44,4 583 100,0
Sudden loss of employment 5 83,3 1 16,7 6 5 83,3 1 16,7 6 22 88,0 3 12,0 25 100,0
Partner dead/missing/disap 77 53,5 67 46,5 144 77 53,5 67 46,5 144 223 49,2 230 50,8 453 100,0
Total Social Aid 8414 63,2 4 903 36,8 13 317 8195 63,9 4632 36,1 12827 24 778 59,2 17 087 40,8 41 865 100,0
Note 1 : Eligibility and Non-eligibility under PMT only
5
Table 3 - Distribution of beneficiaries, households and individuals with disability and by application reason , CS 2008
Social Aid
Complementary Survey 2008
Beneficiaries Households Individuals
Not Eligible Eligible Total Not Eligible Eligible Total Not Eligible Eligible Total
No. % No. % No. No. % No. No. % No. % No.
Application Reason
Medical 2420 55,08 1974 44,92 4394 2204 55,77 1 748 44,2 3952 2959 52,72 2 654 47,3 5 613
Unemploy.Hardship Relief 12 85,71 2 14,29 14 9 90 1 10,0 10 23 76,67 7 23,3 30
Abandoned women 312 55,71 248 44,29 560 387 54,13 328 45,9 715 683 50,52 669 49,5 1 352
Unmarried mother 5 35,71 9 64,29 14 13 36,11 23 63,9 36 27 34,18 52 65,8 79
Imprisonment 17 73,91 6 26,09 23 13 56,52 10 43,5 23 44 55,7 35 44,3 79
Additional Social Aid 6 66,67 3 33,33 9 7 70 3 30,0 10 17 77,27 5 22,7 22
Abandoned Child 12 48 13 52 25 128 61,84 79 38,2 207 248 62,31 150 37,7 398
BRP-Rental allowance 91 43,75 117 56,25 208 91 43,75 117 56,3 208 91 43,75 117 56,3 208
Carer's allowance 0 0 2350 100 2350 0 0 263 100,0 263 0 0 2 987 100,0 2 987
Ex-Gratia 0 0 151 100 151 0 0 16 100,0 16 0 0 193 100,0 193
Multiple birth 1 100 0 0 1 3 50 3 50,0 6 9 47,37 10 52,6 19
Sudden loss of employment 1 100 0 0 1 1 100 0 0,0 1 1 100 0 0,0 1
Partner dead/missing/disap 12 46,15 14 53,85 26 14 51,85 13 48,2 27 24 48 26 52,0 50
Total Social Aid 2889 37,15 4887 62,85 7776 2870 52,43 2 604 47,6 5474 4126 37,4 6 905 62,6 11 031
6
3.2. Other considerations
Note that additional conditions designed in order to rescue severe cases that could be
empowered cover only a minority of the concerned individuals. They are still useful as
show the following figures.
Under the reason ‘Medical’, with PMT 894 current beneficiaries remain eligible.
Adding the new conditions would allow the Ministry to rescue 1119 other beneficiaries.
This is not negligible, although it remains a small correction as compared to the total
number of beneficiaries under social aid.
Under the reason ‘Unmarried mothers’, only 122 current beneficiaries are eligible under
PMT. 23 other beneficiaries can be rescued with the additional conditions.
Under the reason ‘Carer’s Allowance’, 778 are eligible under PMT. 1632 other
beneficiaries can be rescued by applying the additional conditions.
Finally, under the reason ‘Ex Gratia’, 54 beneficiaries remain eligible under PMT, while
101 other ones can be rescued by applying the proposed additional conditions.
Another important element to realize is that many Medical cases can be kept by
invoking the level of disability of the beneficiary. In that case, the beneficiaries could be
redirected towards social programs better specialised in the treatment of disabilities than
7
social aid. The following table shows the number of cases with one or several
disabilities in the current files of SRM at MSS. Obviously there are many of them,
while it is unclear how severe these disabilities are. As mentioned before, individual
with severe disabilities should not be under social aid but another scheme.
Distribution of beneficiaries, households and individuals by disability
Number of disabilities
Complementary Survey 2008
Beneficiaries Households Individuals
No. % No. % No. %
1 7776 58,4 5474 42,7 11031 26,3
2 2796 21,0 1790 14,0 3782 9,0
3
1711 12,8 1106 8,6 2326 5,6
Out of 13,317 beneficiaries, 7776 beneficiaries (58.4 %) have one disability, 2796 (21.0
%) have two disabilities and 1711 (12.8 %) have three disabilities.
Out of 12,827 households, 5474 household heads (42.7 %) have one disability, 1790
(14.0 %) have two disabilities and 1106 (8.6 %) have three disabilities.
Out of 41,865 individuals, 11031 individuals (26.3 %) have one disability, 3782 (9.0 %)
have two disabilities and 2326 (5.6 %) have three disabilities.
The following table, calculated using HBS data, shows that it is illusory to think that we
should be able to identify a large proportion of households with disabled people by just
monitoring the household medical expenses. Indeed, many of them do not spend
anything on health, or have just very small health expenses.
8
Number of disabled/invalid households & individuals by expenditure on health,
HBS 2006/07
Looking at the individuals working in the Formal Sector or in the Informal Sector could
be useful in future selection rules, as shows the next table. Typically, the poor are
believed to belong more to the Informal Sector than to the Formal Sector. Then, our
combined PMT with additional conditions would raise the proportion of beneficiaries
coming from the Informal Sector.
Health expenditure (Rs) Households (No) Individuals (No)
No expenditure 61 194
Less than 500 28 115
501 - 1000 10 35
1001 - 1500 8 25
1501 - 2500 4 14
2501 - 4000 1 9
4001 - 6000 2 4
6001 - 8000 0 3
8001 - 10000 0 1
above 10000 0 1
Total 114 401
9
Sector of employment
Individuals - Complementary Survey 2008
Not eligible Eligible Total
No. % No. % No. %
Formal 2 015 72,4 768 27,6 2 043 100,0
Informal 3 187 63,1 1 867 36,9 5 054 100,0
10
4. The Immediate Cases and Rodrigues
In this section, we deal with groups of beneficiaries for which we have only the slimmer
information. Immediate cases on the one hand, Rodrigues beneficiaries on the other
hand, may be especially important as it is possible that they include some of the most
dramatic situations. Indeed, Rodrigues is the district with higher poverty level, and
immediate payments are often motivated by social emergencies.
4.1. The ‘Immediate’ Cases
The ‘Immediate’ cases under the reason ‘medical’ occur in the following case. A
claimant is employed in the formal sector or the informal sector and is temporarily
incapable of supporting himself/herself and his/her dependents due to temporary
sickness or temporary disability certified by a medical certificate from Ministry of
Health. Then, he/she is assisted by an IP voucher (immediate payment). In Social Aid
Regulation no provision has been made concerning the period during which payment
can be made by IP. However, some of the claimants suffering from temporary sickness
end up as regular cases.
When a claimant is severely ill, he/she is advised to apply for Basic Invalidity Pension
(BIP). Pending determination of his/her claim for BIP, he/she may be paid by IP if
he/she gets through the means test.
11
The situation is still further complicated by the fact that a ‘Immediate Payment’ is not
done only to ‘Immediate Cases’. As a matter of fact, there exist ad hoc cases where
immediate payment is performed. None of these payment, nor any of the immediate
cases, can be studied from the CS data that covers only Regular cases. Finally, a given
person may benefit from more than one immediate payment. So, breaking down the IP
cases by ‘Application reason’ for beneficiaries is not easy.
Immediate payment cases correspond to the 12 application reasons of Social Aid in
about 4/5 of cases. These 80% can be broken down into: 50% for Medical, 30% for
Abandoned Women and 20% for other miscellaneous reasons. However, in 1/5 of the
cases, the immediate payments respond to ad hoc situations (fire victimes, money for
dentures, flood victims, released prisoners). Moreover, this rough division of cases can
vary across years, notably due to the occurrence of natural hazards such as floods.
So, the first thing to do is to try to assess how many immediate cases there are, and the
corresponding number of households, individuals and beneficiaries.
The budget spent on IP for the last financial years are:
(i) 2005/06: Rs 45, 746, 507
(ii) 2006/07: Rs 106, 395, 086
(iii) 2007/08: Rs 62, 998, 688
(iv) 2008/09: Rs 42,588,513
12
It seems that the reason why the budget for 2006/07 is exceptionally higher than the
other years is because it includes Exams Fees. However, such discrepancy does not give
confidence in the social accounts.
In principle, it is impossible to relate the number of beneficiaries to these budgets since
the MSS does not have data on the number of IP beneficiaries. Indeed, there may be
several payments for some IP beneficiaries.
Moreover, the amount payable depends on the reason and the number of days. For
example, for flood it is a one off payment, for medical the number of days payable is
different for different individuals according to the medical certificate, there can be more
than one IP for the same beneficiary within the same month, etc.
However, it is posible to attempt to breakdown the 2008/09 budget by application
reason based on the broad parameters obtained from SRM expert experience. The
remaining reasons 20% can be Split up by using the % breakdown in the CS data and
applying appropriate adjustment so as the total equals the 2008/09 budget. The 2008/09
budget since it is the closest to the CS period.
These very rough estimates have been obtained by starting from the budget breakdown
and converting them into number of beneficiaries. Based on MSS knowledge, the
number of beneficiaries is assumed to be equal to the number of IP, except for Medical.
For Medical, we relied on expert opinions from SRM Unit experts.
13
Then, the numbers of households are extrapolated using the same
beneficiaries/households ratio by Application Reason than for Regular cases in the CS.
Finally, the number of individuals by Application Reason is obtained by using the same
ration individuals/households as in the CS data.
Then, the number of cases paid can be extrapolated, tentatively, by dividing each budget
all by the mean benefit recorded in the CS. The results are shown in the next tables.
They indicate that a large number of persons, perhaps often in dire emergency situations,
benefit from the Immediate Payments. Therefore, there should be taken more seriously
as mere details around a core of Regular cases who are the object of most of the
analyses.
The emergency nature of the IP mechanisms may be a critical social response that it
would be bold to discard without further analyses confirming that such a decisión would
not generate important damage for destitute populations.
In these conditions the reform could focus mostly on the substitution of the current
Regular cases with a PMT system, and complement it with Immediate Payments in a
form adjusted to whatever new information can be obtained about these.
Note that with the new PMT system, there will be no risk of IP cases to become
permanent. This element should generate some saving of social funds as compared to
the current system in which many IP beneficiary settle permanent assistence for life.
14
Immediate Payment 2008/09 budget - Rough breakdown estimates by
Application Reason
Application Reason 2008/09 budget
breakdown (Rs)
No of
cases
PAID1
Medical 17,035,405 9,898
Abandoned women 10,221,243 5,939
Unemployment Hardship Relief 55,620 32
Unmarried mother 248,200 144
Imprisonment 395,625 230
Additional Social Aid 12,927 8
Abandoned Child 1,102,900 641
BRP-Rental allowance 352,041 205
Carer's allowance 4,025,179 2,339
Ex-Gratia 155,537 90
Multiple birth 277,501 161
Sudden loss of employment 8,585 5
Partner dead/missing/disappeared 180,046 105
TOTAL 34,070,810 19,795
OTHERS (FIRE, FLOOD, DENTURES,
PRISONERS) 8,517,703 4,949
GRAND TOTAL IMMEDIATE PAYMENT
2008/09 42,588,513 24,744
Footnote 1: Figures refer to the number of Immediate Payments (NOT to the number of
beneficiaries). That is a particular beneficiary can obtain more than 1 Immediate Payment.
15
Immediate Payment 2008/09 budget - Rough breakdown estimates by Application
Reason
Application Reason
2008/09
budget
breakdown
(Rs)
No of
cases
PAID
No. of
Beneficiaries
No. of
Households
No. of
Individuals
Medical 17,035,405 9,898 8,244 7,941 25,887
Abandoned women 10,221,243 5,939 5,939 5,720 18,647
Unemployment Hardship Relief 55,620 32 32 31 101
Unmarried mother 248,200 144 144 139 453
Imprisonment 395,625 230 230 221 722
Additional Social Aid 12,927 8 8 7 24
Abandoned Child 1,102,900 641 641 617 2,012
BRP-Rental allowance 352,041 205 205 197 642
Carer's allowance 4,025,179 2,339 2,339 2,253 7,343
Ex-Gratia 155,537 90 90 87 284
Multiple birth 277,501 161 161 155 506
Sudden loss of employment 8,585 5 5 5 16
Partner dead/missing/disappeared 180,046 105 105 101 328
TOTAL 34,070,810 19,795 18,142 17,474 56,966
16
4.2. Rodrigues
Let us now turn to the case of Rodrigues, for which there is no data in the CS dtabase.
Again, the same rough approximation as before can be generated to assess the number
of individual concerned.
Budget 2011 for Regular cases has been obtained from MOFEE. Budget for Immediate
cases was 1.7 Million Rupees for 2009/09, it has been approximated to 2 Million
Rupees for 2011.
The following table shows rough breakdown estimates by Application Reason. Again,
some estimates of the number of indivudal and households are bsed on the ratios found
in CS data for Mauritius.
These estimates indicate a clear dominance of Abandonned Woman cases, whereas
Medical cases seems to be almost inexistent. Obviously, these tentative statistical results
seem to be too suspect to want to base any policy on them without further investigation.
Therefore, what is needed is to collect the missing information in Rodrigues.
Alternatively, the same policy than in Mauritius could be purseued blindly, hoping that
what has worked well for Mauritius would also work reasonably well for Rodrigues.
17
Rodrigues Social Aid 2011 Budget - Rough breakdown estimates by Application
Reason
Regular cases Immediate cases
Application Reason 2011 budget
breakdown
(Rs)1
Benefic.2 Hholds
3 Indiv
3
Approx
2011
Budget
breakdown
(Rs)
Benefic.4 Hholds
3 Indiv
3
Medical 713,465 26 25 82 33,184 13 13 42
Abandoned women 22,721,123 828 798 2,600 1,056,796 423 407 1,327
Unemployment Hardship Relief 6,860,243 250 241 785 319,081 128 123 401
Unmarried mother 686,024 25 24 79 31,908 13 12 40
Imprisonment 27,441 1 1 3 1,276 1 0 2
Additional Social Aid 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Abandoned Child 7,628,590 278 268 873 354,818 142 137 446
BRP-Rental allowance 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Carer's allowance 3,430,121 125 120 393 159,541 64 61 200
Ex-Gratia 631,142 23 22 72 29,355 12 11 37
Multiple birth 164,646 6 6 19 7,658 3 3 10
Sudden loss of employment 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Partner dead/missing/disappeared 137,205 5 5 16 6,382 3 2 8
TOTAL 43,000,000 1,567 1,509 4,920 2,000,000 800 771 2,512
1: Same budget of Rs Mn 43 in 2010 is planned for 2011
2: Last data available - 2009
3: Rough breakdown using information from CS data
4: Data for year 2008/09 used for breakdown
18
5. Budget Issues
A major piece of information for the specification of the transfer scheme is the available
budget. However, it is important to understand that the approach we proposed for the
PMT adjusted with additional conditions can be fitted to any budget. This is because the
optimal transfer formulae we proposed are defined in terms of a threshold that can be
recalculated for any new budget situation. However, we need a precise budget estimate.
In a previous report, we suggested that MSS regularly establishes a set of accounting
tables about how social aid budget is spent, say every few months.
At the occasion of this urgent response to policy demands, the SRM Unit was prompted
to produce budget tables to clarify further the implementation of the reform. Some
interesting tables were produced that are shown below.
However, there are still some interrogations about the available budget. In particular,
there is a large MSI budget in principle available for empowerment actions. But clearly,
MSI’s capacity to carry out these actions efficiently is not likely to be established before
a long time. In these conditions, it would be natural that MSI could participate to the
funding of the reform in the meantime.
On the other hand, when using CS data, which only covers regular cases for Mauritius,
we have estimated the sum of amounts paid for social aid at 197 millions of Rupees
corresponding the time of the CS collection. In our current simulations, we therefore
19
used again 193 millions of Rupees as the budget to fund PMT transfers instead of
regular social aid transfers in Mauritius (193 instead of 197 because of convenient
rounding in the software program). However, when correcting for the missed
households during the matching of LCS and CS data, we obtain 271 millions.
Finally, the total of amounts paid recorded in the CS file is equal to 291 millions of
Rupees. The latter two amounts are close enough to make the simulations credible.
At some stage, MSS plan was that those who are eligible under PMT adjusted with
additional conditions would be MSS clients, whereas those who are not eligible would
be empowered by MSI. However, the latter, hopefully, will continue to receive cash
transfers for about a year. In that case, MSS would like to have the breakdown estimates
for the 2010 budget for these same categories.
As before, budget breakdown by categories of eligibility status by application reason
can be extrapolated from the amounts paid in CS data.
20
The following table shows the budget for the social safety net.The Social Safety net is a
sub-programme in the budget which deals with Social Benefits. As mentioned before,
the social benefits by Application Reasons are broken down using the percentages
obtained from the CS data.
PBB Budget Estimates - Social Safety Net (Item 50201) Source: Programmme-Based Budget reports
Item 2008/09 Estimates 2010 Estimates 2011 Planned
TOTAL - SOCIAL SAFETY NET (ITEM 50201 IN PBB) 809 695 000 825 580 000 838 809 000
Compensation of Employees
52 630 000 72 480 000 73 594 000
Personal Emoluments
42 620 000 60 980 000 62 094 000
Other Staff Costs
10 010 000 11 500 000 11 500 000
Goods and Services
32 540 000 29 940 000 23 455 000
Utilities (electricity, phone, water, etc.)
2 360 000 2 650 000 2 650 000
Rent
4 570 000 8 110 000 8 625 000
Office equipment and furniture
120 000 2 200 000 2 200 000
Office expenses (postage, cleaning, etc.)
1 355 000 1 505 000 1 505 000
Maintenance (building, equipment, etc.)
1 310 000 4 320 000 4 320 000
Security
250 000 600 000 600 000
Publications/Stationery
950 000 880 000 880 000
Fees (to Mauritius Post Ltd)
100 000 350 000 350 000
Studies and Surveys
20 000 000 7 000 000 0
Other Goods and Services (e.g. uniforms)
1 525 000 2 325 000 2 325 000
Social Benefits
670 925 000 659 600 000 678 200 000
Social Assistance in Cash
659 925 000 644 600 000 663 200 000
Social Aid
100,00 % 373 300 000 390 000 000 600 000 000
of which: Medical 33,39 % 124 631 794 130 207 339
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PM
T
Unemployment Hardship Relief 0,32 % 1 189 970 1 243 205
Abandoned women 27,56 % 102 880 599 107 483 080
Unmarried mother 1,42 % 5 310 197 5 547 755
Imprisonment 2,27 % 8 464 306 8 842 966
Additional Social Aid 0,07 % 276 574 288 947
Abandoned Child 6,32 % 23 596 327 24 651 936
BRP-Rental allowance 2,02 % 7 531 851 7 868 796
Carer's allowance 23,07 % 86 117 883 89 970 464
21
Ex-Gratia 0,89 % 3 327 689 3 476 557
Multiple birth 1,59 % 5 937 085 6 202 687
Sudden loss of employment 0,05 % 183 684 191 901
Partner dead/missing/disappeared 1,03 % 3 852 042 4 024 367
Assistance to fishermen
60 000 000 60 000 000 0
Income Support
130 000 000 120 000 000 0
Funeral grants
10 900 000 11 400 000 0
Subsidy on SC and HSC exams fees
85 700 000 63 200 000 63 200 000
Family Allowance
25 000 0 0
Social Assistance in Kind
11 000 000 15 000 000 15 000 000
Other Expense (transfers to Non-Profit institutions)
50 100 000 60 560 000 60 560 000
Acquisition of Non-Financial Assets
3 500 000 3 000 000 3 000 000
Non-Residential buildings
0 2 000 000 2 000 000
Transport Equipment 3 500 000 1 000 000 1 000 000
The next table shows the amount paid from CS Social Aid - per month. (CS data updated @ April 2010) Calcs to estimate % by reason. This is used to distribute S.Aid Budget from PBB reports over the Application Reasons (UHR has also been included within Social Aid)
Total %
Medical 8 141 487 33,39
Unemployment Hardship Relief 77 734 0,32
Abandoned women 6 720 605 27,56
Unmarried mother 346 885 1,42
Imprisonment 552 925 2,27
Additional Social Aid 18 067 0,07
Abandoned Child 1 541 414 6,32
BRP-Rental allowance 492 013 2,02
Carer's allowance 5 625 592 23,07
Ex-Gratia 217 379 0,89
Multiple birth 387 836 1,59
Sudden loss of employment 11 999 0,05
Partner dead/missing/disappeared 251 632 1,03
Total 24 385 568 100,00
22
Social Benefits: Cash Transfers - 2010 Budget Estimates (Rs Mn) (Breakdown of Social Aid by Application Reasons using Complementary Survey data)
Social Benefits details
Beneficiaries - Complementary Survey 2008 2010 estimates (Rs Mn) for beneficiaries who are: Not eligible
1 Eligible
1 Total
No. % No. % No. % Not
eligible4
Eligible4 Total
Social Aid
Medical 2 484 55,2 2 013 44,8 4 497 100,0 72,5 57,7 130,2
Unemployment Hardship Relief 64 82,1 14 17,9 78 100,0 1,0 0,3 1,2
Abandoned women 1 720 45,9 2 026 54,1 3 746 100,0 46,2 61,3 107,5
Unmarried mother 80 35,6 145 64,4 225 100,0 2,0 3,6 5,5
Imprisonment 184 60,3 121 39,7 305 100,0 5,1 3,7 8,8
Additional Social Aid 14 77,8 4 22,2 18 100,0 0,2 0,1 0,3
Abandoned Child 619 55,0 506 45,0 1 125 100,0 12,1 12,5 24,7
BRP-Rental allowance 165 43,4 215 56,6 380 100,0 3,5 4,4 7,9
Carer's allowance2 0 0,0 2 410 100,0 2 410 100,0 0,0 90,0 90,0
Ex-Gratia2 0 0,0 155 100,0 155 100,0 0,0 3,5 3,5
Multiple birth 127 55,7 101 44,3 228 100,0 3,4 2,8 6,2
Sudden loss of employment 5 83,3 1 16,7 6 100,0 0,1 0,0 0,2
Partner dead/missing/disappeared 77 53,5 67 46,5 144 100,0 2,1 2,0 4,0
Total Social Aid 5 539 41,6 7 778 58,4 13 317 100,0 148,3 241,7 390,0
Other cash transfers3
Assistance to fishermen 60,0 60,0
Income Support 120,0 120,0
Funeral Grants 11,4 11,4
SC and HSC exams fees 63,2 63,2
Total 2010 estimates (Social Benefits) 148,3 496,3 644,6
1 & 2: Eligibility assessment based on CS data using PMT + additional rules, except for Carer's Allowance and Ex-Gratia where all beneficiaries have been included.
3: Data on Other Cash Transfers is not available in the CS data.
4: The breakdown of the Social Aid budget into categories of [Eligibility x Application Reason] is based on the amount of benefits paid to beneficiaries, as recorded in the CS data
23
Reformed Social Aid: Cash Transfers - 2010 Budget Estimates (Rs Mn) Budget estimates for Social Aid allowance and Income Support for beneficiaries of Social Aid: Breakdown by Application Reasons
Application Reason
2010 estimates (Rs Mn) for Social Aid allowance
2010 estimates (Rs Mn) for Income Support for beneficiaries of Social
Aid
2010 estimates (Rs Mn) for Social Aid allowance + Income Support:
Not eligible
1
Eligible1 Total
Not eligible
3
Eligible3 Total
Not eligible
Eligible Total
Medical 72,5 57,7 130,2 7,6 6,2 13,7 80,1 63,8 144,0
Unemployment Hardship Relief 1,0 0,3 1,2 0,7 0,1 0,8 1,6 0,4 2,0
Abandoned women 46,2 61,3 107,5 8,3 9,8 18,1 54,5 71,1 125,6
Unmarried mother 2,0 3,6 5,5 0,3 0,6 0,9 2,3 4,1 6,4
Imprisonment 5,1 3,7 8,8 0,8 0,5 1,3 5,9 4,2 10,1
Additional Social Aid 0,2 0,1 0,3 0,1 0,0 0,1 0,3 0,1 0,4
Abandoned Child 12,1 12,5 24,7 1,2 1,0 2,1 13,3 13,5 26,8
BRP-Rental allowance 3,5 4,4 7,9 0,1 0,1 0,2 3,6 4,5 8,1
Carer's allowance2 0,0 90,0 90,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 90,0 90,0
Ex-Gratia2 0,0 3,5 3,5 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 3,5 3,5
Multiple birth 3,4 2,8 6,2 0,0 0,0 0,0 3,4 2,8 6,2
Sudden loss of employment 0,1 0,0 0,2 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,2 0,0 0,2
Partner dead/missing/disappeared 2,1 2,0 4,0 0,3 0,3 0,6 2,4 2,3 4,7
Total Social Aid 148,3 241,7 390,0 19,4 18,6 38,0 167,7 260,3 428,0
1 & 2: Eligibility assessment based on CS data using PMT + additional rules, except for Carer's Allowance and Ex-Gratia where all beneficiaries have been included.
3: Breakdown of Income Support by Application Reason based on CS data and expenditure data for financial year 2008-09
Even if these tentative budget information do not inform on the budget available for the
reform, they may be useful to determine the amount necessary to sustain PMT non-
eligible current beneficiaries that would still be kept on social aid by MSS.
These tables have now to be refined tso as we can distinguish the Regular from the
Immediate cases.
24
6. Policy Simulations
6.1. The problem
We want to use additional information in order to improve the efficiency of PMT. Many
varaibles have been deemed to be useful for this aim. However, they are neither
available in the CS data, nor in the HBS data. So, we turned our attention to the LCS dta
to attempt to mobilise a few additional variables in order to enhance the prediction of
living standards.
These variables are: characteristics of the toilet, characteristics of the kitchen, presence
of an ill person in the household, urban/rural location, various equipment such a tv,
stereo, vcr, refrigerator, washing machine, fixe and mobile phones, etc.
6.2. The predictive equations
The predictive equations are used to predict household living standards from a small set
of easy-to-observe characteristics. The new equations are estimated using LCS data
(with 1125 households) instead of using HBS data (based on 6720 households).
In Muller (2005) and Muller and Bibi (2010), develop a new methodology to target
efficiently direct transfers against poverty. The principle is to estimate ‘focused’ transfer
25
schemes that highly improve anti-poverty targeting performances. With the new
estimation method, post-transfer poverty can be substantially reduced. For Mauritius,
we have benefited from the experience accumulated in Tunisia, and proposed PMT that
lead to reduced severity of poverty when using the social aid budget of Regular cases
for Mauritius..
In our approach, focusing on the poor means that the living standard predictions are
calculated by defining the quantile regression in terms of living standard levels
representative of the poor. Precisely, we use the quantile regression centered in the
quantile of living standard corresponding to the poverty line.
The estimated PMT score is:
Score = p_y = 7.15 + 0 .018 age of head - 0 .00020 age_sq - 0.16 gender of head
+ 0.153 rooms - 0.00431 room_sq - 0 .121 babies - 0.138 young children
- 0 .142 teenagers - 0.0957 young adults - 0 .0659 adults - 0.174 elderlies
- 0.1008281 district of Pamplemousses - 0.1090934 district of Riv. du Rempart
-0.2054286 district of Flacq - 0.111349 district of Grand Port - 0.0512721 district of
Savanne -0.0390504 district of Plaines Wilhems -0.1222938 district of Moka
-0.0741835 district of Black River - 0.5114234 Island of Rodrigues + 0 .284 detached
building + 0.272 semi-detached building + 0.205 subdivided building
where
age head=age of head
26
age_sq= (age of head) 2
gender of head= sex of head which is unity if sex = male, 2 otherwise
rooms = Number of rooms within the household
room_sq = (Number of rooms within the household) 2
babies = number of babies aged 0 to 3 years old
young children = number of children aged 4 to 10 years old
teenagers = number of teenagers aged 11 to 16 years old
young adults = number of adults aged 17 to 21 years old
adults = number of adults aged 22 to 60 years old
elderlies= number of elderly above 60 years old
6.3. Optimal transfers from using predicted living standards
For minimizing a FGT poverty measure (Foster et al., 1984) sensitive to poverty severity
(α >1), the solution can be stated explicity. It is optimal to start allocating the anti-
poverty budget to the poorest of the poor, and then ‘sweeping up’ the income
distribution. In that case, the transfer formula can be written as:
ti = ymax – y
i if y
i < ymax
ti = 0 otherwise,
27
where ymax is the highest cut-off income allowed by the budget. As the anti-poverty
budget rises, ymax increases up to the poverty line, z.
This formula shows explicitly that the transfer rule can be adjusted to any budget
chosen by the government.
In practice, rather than estimating expected poverty, the unobserved living standards can
be replaced by their predictions based on observed variables.
We follow a two-step procedure. First, the predictions of yi conditional on Xi (the
vector of income correlates for household i is parametrically estimated by using quantile
regressions centered at the poverty line. Then, if the budget allows it, each predicted
poor individual receives the difference between its predicted income and the poverty
line.
The calculated transfer is: ymax minus the predicted income, for each household
predicted poor; and zero for households predicted non-poor. So, the calculation of the
transfers in the simulations requires determining the cut-off income, ymax. This is done
by estimating the total amount of potential transfers, while raising or lowering ymax until
it corresponds to the available budget. With the social aid budget spend for regular
households in Mauritius island in the CS data and the short score we obtain ymax = 76 %
of the general poverty line.
Let us now adjust this reasoning for dealing with living standards instead of merely
incomes. As a matter of fact, on the observed sample the PMT score exactly coincide
28
with the predicted living standard, denoted p_y. Then, the considered household is
selected for social aid support if and only if p_y < ymax.
Then, the predicted optimal transfer is equal to
(y max - p_y) * (general equivalence scale).
The correction by the equivalence scale is what allows us to account for differences in
household composition among beneficiaries.
We do not restrict our attention to optimal transfers. Indeed, the optimality of such
transfer formula would be completely ensured only if living standard predictions were
perfect. This situation cannot be reached with limited data. Then, we also consider
uniform transfers where individuals identified as poor from their predicted living
standard all receive the same transfer amount.
In that case, the households are still selected for social aid by using the same rule:
p_y < ymax
and they receive each:
(total transfer budget) /
(number of households such that p_y < ymax)
29
The studied scenario corresponds to:
(1) Taking away social aid from observed regular beneficiaries in Mauritius, as
detected by matching them with LCS;
(2) Giving PMT transfers to all households selected by using the above PMT
formula in Mauritius Island.
Note that we do not consider any change in transfers for Rodrigues as the corresponding
households do not appear in the data.
At that stage, several modifications were done as compared to past simulations:
(a) Using the LCS dta instead of the BS data
(b) Adding a few other variables in the score estimation
(c) Adding the additional consitions to the eligibility criteria.
30
Let us remind some of the results obtained with the PMT, even before investigating the
new variables.
The coverage of the poor households can be reached with the PMT system (25.5 % of
poor households for general poverty, 28.1 % of poor households for nutritional poverty)
than with the current social aid program for regular cases in Mauritius (5.1 % for
general poverty, 3.2 % for nutritional poverty).
When considering targeting indicators at the individual level. Namely, 30.9 % of the
general poor are potentially covered by the new PMT system, and 35.9% of the
nutritional poor.
The current Social Aid program of regular cases in Mauritius island leads to spend 91%
of the budget on individuals who are non-poor in the general sense, and 97 % on
individuals who are non-poor in the nutritional sense. In contrast, the proposed focused
PMT scheme allows us to reduce the Leakage to 71.9 % of households and 72.1 % of
individuals when considering general poverty; and 86.9 % of households and 83.9 % of
individuals when considering nutritional poverty.
31
With the focused PMT, the reduction in poverty severity is of 17 % (from 0.449 to
0.374), with the same budget.
Using the PMT score with uniform transfers and a selection threshold at the nutritional
poverty line produces a 4 % fall of the head-count index associated with a 8 % fall of
poverty severity.
From there, we added the new variables to the score and we incorporated the additional
conditions. This yielded a large set of new simulations (not shown to save on time).
Unfortunately, these new simulations provided rather disappointing results. They do not
allow us to improve the performance of the PMT in terms of poverty reduction, and
even sometimes raise poverty levels. More work could be done in this direction, though,
as only a few days were available to push these simulations.
There are several reasons why the new simulation did not provide much improvements.
First, the only data usable with the new variables is the LCS data that is characterised by
a small simple size and an unbalanced simple scheme. These data do not allow to
generate as strong predictions as the HBS data which was used to specify the initial
PMT formulae. Indeed, the (quantile) regressions are less accurately estimated than
from HBS data, notably because of the much smaller simple size. This yields less
accurate predicted living standards than for the initial PMT, even when using more
32
variables. Therefore, the estimated performance of the new PMT is in fact less
satisfactory for the anti-poverty policy.
Second, the introduction of additional conditions to protect some of the loserrs of the
reform seems to have caused some confusión as to the aim of a social aid system.
The impact of the additional conditions weakens the efficiency of the PMT, although
rather marginally as only a few current beneficiaries can be rescued by these conditions.
However, clearly with just a few percent of the poor covered by the current system,
preserving some of the ineligible current beneficiaries is always going to degrade the
performance of the system in terms of povery alleviation. Now, there may be other
motivations to keep some of these beneficiaries, for example dealing with gender issues
or health problems for non-poor households. This was not initially the approach of the
government who wanted to center the social policy on the poor.
Third, these estimation results do not mean that introducing new variants in the PMT is
not a good idea. It is just that we do not have the data to estímate accurately enough the
coefficients of these variables in the score. To progress from this, CSO should include
these variables in the next HBS. Then, new PMT socre including these variables could
be reestimated from these new data. In any case, it will be useful to update the PMT
formula when the new HBS data is available.
33
6. Policy Conclusions and Recommendations
6.1. The Issues
A few central issues remain within the social and administrative system which would
need to be tackled in order to make the reform successful.
First, grossly wrong statistics or figures are routinely used in various documents about
the reform. This is contradicting the strategy of capacity building in management and
analysis of social statistics at MSS, which is a central objective of the SRM project.
Beyond, the lack of knowledge and experience of survey statistics techniques, this
denotes that the basic documents in the country about social aid, targeting and poverty
analysis have often not even been read by the authors of these documents. I cannot see
how any credible policy can be produced without a basic effort of acquiring core
information. There is nothing wrong is not knowing well how to compute statistics as
long as these wrong figures are not used. It is so simple to use correct and published
figures instead.
Note that many statistical reports have been produced by the SRM project. In these
report, almost all the useful statistical results are present. Moreover, deontology requires
citing the sources of the used statistics. Too often, ‘cooked out’ figures distort the
Mauritius reality (as grossly wrong coverage of the poor by social aid for example).
This lack of control of statistics in the reform documents has several damaging
consequences we would like to avoid. On the one hand, it makes the public and the
knowledgeable experts doubt about the seriousness of the reform. On the other hand,
wrong statistics may lead to wrong policy conclusions such as ‘almost no households
34
will be excluded’, which are not only ludicrous but may harm the population in the end.
So, more rigour is needed in the use of statistics for the reform.
Second, the additional conditions proposed by the SRM Unit from a synthesis of
internal MSS expertise are useful, while they have only limited impact. It is doubtful if
they will sufficiently provide sufficient protections to the losers of the reforms in
situations where the empowerment system is not fully operational.
But is the aim of the reform to protect losers at all cost? Ultimately, this question is
related to the policy trade-off between serving the poor or other social categories of
destitute households. If the view of the government is still to reorient the social system
in the direction of the poor, these additional conditions are not as important as if new
policy targets are decided.
Third, at the core of some current reform proposal is the illusion that it would be
possible to immediately ‘empower’ the PMT-excluded social aid beneficiaries, and
therefore make the suppression of their benefits harmless. However, my perception of
the situation after several years of work on social systems in Mauritius is that the
current empowerment system at MSI and eslsewhere is far from ready to deal with
losers of the reform. In fact, I doubt that a comprehensive and functioning
empowerment system can be put in place before a few years of capacity building efforts.
This opinion is consistent with a recent UNDP report (Sibandan, 2010), which is crystal
clear about the glaring gaps in the current empowerment system.
35
The truth is that there is no immediate capacity in the country for dealing with a
controled ‘Grand Reform’ of the social system. However, a limited reform centered on
the PMT implementation is still possible.
The fact that the empowerment system is not ready makes the chosen additional
conditions less relevant, as these conditions are based on the assumption that mostly
persons who cannot be empowered should be of concern. However, these conditions
can still be used on the ground that excluded beneficiaries could be promised to benefit
from empowerment programmes in the future when these are ready. In that sense, the
compensation to losers is delayed in time, while not inexistent.
Fourth, at the moment, there is not enough safe information available on some
categories of current or potential beneficiaries to be able to monitor their situation well.
This is the case for the ‘Immediate Payment’ beneficiaries and for Rodrigues island.
These cases are important enough to justify further investigation.
Fifth, despite the efforts devoted by the SRM Unit and other national administration
offices to clarify these questions, the information on budget structures and the
corresponding projections still seems to be on shaky bases. As mentioned in a previous
report, some further efforts from MSE and MOFEE are necessary to reach more control
in this area.
An improvement would be to make transparent the principles for deciding of the level
of the global transfer budget. Then, it would also be useful to routinely establish social
budgets at a very disaggregated level. For example, one would like to know the amount
of transfers by sub-programmes (the ‘application reasons’ in CS data), with the
36
breakdown between immediate and regular cases, and separating the islands of
Mauritius and Rodrigues.
Finally, it would be worthwhile to explore the interconnection of MSS and MSI budget
in the perspective of MSI of financing some transitory assistance in the form of cash
transfers for current MSS beneficiaries who are going to lose their benefits with the
PMT implementation.
37
6.2. Recommendations
(d) Statistics
Make available all relevant statistical documents to the experts and staff involved in the
reform and ask them to read them carefully.
Control important indicator estimates. Avoid claiming policy conclusions from badly
understood statistics.
Cite sources of information and/or estimation methodology for statistics. Any figure
without citing the source is to be considered as suspect.
(e) Additional conditions
Systematize and improve the informal checks already carried out for current MSS
programs in the case of the new PMT-based social aid. The results of the checks can be
used for excluding applicants but also to temporary rescue current beneficiaries from
being excluded from the new program.
Keep on social aid all current beneficiaries of carer’s allowance and ex-Gratia.
Introduce Medical reports from MSS medical board to limit frauds further.
38
Use the proposed Additional conditions for the Medical and Carer’s allowance
applications.
( c) Information Needs
Collect more information on current and potential beneficiaries for the ‘Immediate
Payment’ cases and for Rodrigues.
Add questions about a few correlates of living standards in the next CS and HBS
questionnaires.
Produce budget breakdown separating Immediate and Regular cases. Clarify the
mechanisms producing the budget for transfers over a few years.
(d) Budget
Associate MSI to the protection of current beneficiaries during the transition period of
PMT implementation. There are many unspent funds of MSI because the empowerment
capacity is no longer in place. These funds could be used to compensate ‘losers’ of the
reform for a limited period.
Once the definite budget is known for Regular cases in Mauritius, an adjusted threshold
can be estimated for the PMT corresponding to the cases, under additional conditions.
Thus, there is some flexibility in the calculus of transfer benedit that can be adjusted to
the finally decided annual budget.
39
(e) Grouping programs
Group Income Support and Social Aid under the same PMT program.
Eliminate the sub-programmes ‘Additional Social Aid’ and ‘Sudden Loss of
Unemployment’ that have very few ineligible beneficiaries under PMT.
(f) Deal with Immediate Payment Cases
Monitor the Immediate Payment cases and design selection rules to deal with the most
dramatic situations only.
Continue to deal these IP cases, instead of substituting them with PMT, until more is
known about them and it is clear that they can be discarded.
(g) Focus to the poor
Decide if the population of the poor is still a priority. It is legitímate to be concerned
about other target population than the poor and deal with gender issues and health
problems. However, not implementing PMT in order to overprotect these populations
will amount to sacrifice the interest of the poor, which is the main target population.
40
Abandoning them to serve other destitute categories instead would be a major policy
change that can only be decided at the top goverment level.
However, if the priority given to the poor is confirmed, the sooner the PMT can be
implemented, even with imperfections, the better. At the moment the very low coverage
of the poor by social aid (5% for the Regular cases in Mauritius Island) is hurting them.
Delaying PMT implementation implies a continuation of such damage to the poor since
post-PMT coverage of the poor is about 30%.
On the whole, with the additional conditions and possible complement budget from MSI
to compensate losers of the reform, the benefits of moving from the current social aid
system to PMT for the poor very largely offset the inconvenients suffered by a few
losers of the reform. So, we recommend implementing the PMT as soon as possible.
41
6.3. Policy Options
Option 1: Just apply PMT to Mauritius such as described in Muller (2010). After further
analyses, what was first proposed appears as quite robust to our attempts of
improvement. No much more can be done at the moment in termes of statistical
efficiency with the current available information. Keep IP cases.
Option 2: Apply PMT to Mauritius with the additional conditions proposed in Section 2.
Keep IP cases.
Option 3: Apply PMT and keep completely the category Medical along with additional
conditions. Then, the budget differential would come from the unspend funds from MSI.
Keep IP cases.
Option 4: Apply PMT universally including Rodrigues and IP cases. Use additional
conditions
Option 5: Do nothing.
Appendices
A1: References:
42
Foster, J., J. Greer, and Thorbecke, E. (1984), “A Class of Decomposable Poverty
Measures,” Econometrica, vol. 52: 761-765.
Muller, C. (2005), "Optimising Anti-Poverty Transfers with Quantile Regressions,"
Applied and Computational Mathematics, Vol. 4, No. 2.
Muller, C. (2009a), “A Nutritional Poverty Profile in Mauritius 2006-07,” UNDP
Mauritius, Port-Louis, January.
Muller, C. (2009b), “Living Condition Survey in Mauritius: General Poverty Profile,”
UNDP Mauritius, Port-Louis, October.
Muller, C. (2010), Targeting Indicators of Social Aid in Mauritius,” UNDP Mauritius,
Port-Louis, June 2010.
Muller, C. And S. Bibi (2010), “Refining Targeting against Poverty: Evidence from
Tunisia”, Forthcoming Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics.
Sibandan, B., “Aide Ménoire Mauritius scoping mission, main findings and recommendations,”UNDP, Mauritius, October 2010