"These qualities, combined with skills and techniques (at least readiness to learn them), are the main assets that have prompted our decision to locate in Mauritius," said Lew-Fai, in an e-mail exchange. also engages in BPO and shares almost the same script on why it located a facility on the island.Īccording to the managing director of Astek, Paula Lew-Fai, the close cultural links between France and Mauritius, a qualified pool of young professionals exposed to two languages and with a flexible attitude to other cultures and conventions and standards of professionalism, made Mauritius a destination worth considering. In addition, the government developed a fiscal policy for information and communication technology enterprises that encourages business development, Adolphe said, "We then examined more in detail the possibility of setting up office there (Mauritius) in comparison with other destinations such as Vietnam and Tunisia and decided that the infrastructure, the availability of labor and generally the costs of it all made it a sensible move." Batch was founded in France.Īstek (Mauritius) Ltd.
Mauritius is situated in a very convenient time zone between Europe and Asia, its population is bilingual and educated, labor is quite easily available, and the telecommunications infrastructure is well developed, very advanced and reliable, he said. "We are currently working for some French clients, receiving scanned images of their documents, capturing data from those images, processing them to varied degrees and sending (them) back as a usable database to the clients," said Thierry Adolphe, financial manager of Batch Image Processing Indian Ocean Ltd., which has been operating its 50-workstation facility since April this year.Īdolphe believes the island possesses attractive attributes. Initial feedback from new entrants into Mauritius' BPO market is enthusiastic.
Mauritius is linked to the fiber optic cable SAFE, which connects North America and Europe to Asia through India.
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Project originators hope the island's bilingual work force (French and English), the country's stability - far from war and relatively free from risk of terror attacks - and its robust telecommunications networks will make it a competitive BPO destination. Hence, the government thought of a fifth pillar to hold the economy: the K-economy, making Mauritius a knowledge-based, high-tech Cyber island," Salemohamed said. Hence, we will not be able to compete with giants like India, China, Brazil, etc. "Mauritius has no yarn or cotton as raw materials. Now with liberalization, we can no more rely on these quotas," Salemohamed said. "We were successful in textiles manufacturing primarily because we had preferential trade agreement with the U.S. Mauritius decided to venture into high tech after trade in one of the pillars of its economy, textile manufacturing, was deregulated internationally.