The World Trade Organisation concluded the fifth trade policy review of Mauritius between the 9th and 11th November 2021. The WTO report shows that Europe remains the main export market for Mauritian products, accounting for some 45% of total exports of goods in 2019-2020, even though this share has declined over time due to diversification of markets. In terms of individual markets, the UK remains the main buyer of Mauritian products, while the US occupies the second place. Conversely, the share of exports to the African market has registered a significant increase from 19.3% in 2014 to almost 27% in 2019-2020, South Africa and Kenya having registered a constant and progressive increase of their imports from this country. Concerning Mauritian imports, more than half of the imports are sourced from the Asian continent, with China (16.7%) and India (13.9%) occupying the first two places.
On July 2020, the World Bank classified Mauritius as a high-income country, becoming after Seychelles the second high-income economy in Africa. With regard to the trade facilitation environment, Mauritius ratified the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) in 2015 and is currently fully implementing all its "Category A" commitments, while discussions with donors to obtain technical assistance to finance category "C" measures are still ongoing.
Among the measures have been adopted by the Mauritius Revenue Authority (MRA) Customs to reduce transaction costs and facilitate trade, these include:
Mauritius also concluded so far two Time Release Studies (TRSs). The first one was released in January 2017, while a second has been conducted more recently and is expected for release soon.
Mauritius has developed a National Single Window called Mauritius TradeLink. Its aim is to reduce the time and cost of doing business and at the same time providing transparency about Customs and other government agencies trade-related processes. As at date,13 agencies involved in the clearance of goods at import are interfaced with the single window for the online application, processing and approval of trade-related permits.