Can Mauritius afford its universal basic pension?

What BRP does.

BRP provides an income floor for people with low earnings or limited contributory pensions, while reducing the risk of retirees outliving their savings.

Its poverty impact is substantial. Removing BRP income raises the modelled 2023 poverty rate from 7.3% to 22.3%, and from 3.9% to 33.4% among households with an older resident. This is a static estimate, not a forecast of reform.

BRP has also risen substantially relative to earlier benchmarks. The standard rate rose from 53% of the official poverty line in 1996/97 to 120% in 2025. By 2025, it was also 54% of the median wage and 93% of the minimum wage.

What other income do older Mauritians have?

Excluding BRP itself, 78.8% of people aged 60+ earn under Rs14,000 a month from other sources, while 5% earn more than Rs40,000. This matters for means-testing: the number affected depends heavily on where any income threshold is set.

The withdrawn 2026 proposal gives one example: SAP would have gradually tapered as other income rose, reaching zero at around Rs44,000 a month.

In 2025, the Government sought to contain costs by gradually raising BRP eligibility from 60 to 65, prompting protests. The 2026/27 Budget instead proposed a State Age Pension (SAP) from age 60, but with permanently lower payments when claimed before 65. An accompanying means test was later withdrawn, while opposition parties subsequently campaigned to restore and increase BRP.

To reduce the influence of election cycles, the Pension Reform Commission proposes an independent Pension Regulatory Authority, with increases linked to measures such as inflation, wages and GDP growth. Changes beyond those limits would require near-unanimous Parliamentary approval.

The Commission also proposes reforms to civil-service and parliamentary pensions, recognising that changes to BRP sit within a wider system of publicly funded retirement benefits.

Can the workforce support further increases?

Employment per BRP recipient fell from 4.7 in 1990 to 2.0 in 2026. Mauritius also went from 16 working-age residents per person aged 65+ in 1962 to fewer than five today, with around 2.5 projected by 2064. The total population is also projected to shrink.

Mauritians are living longer: life expectancy at birth has risen from around 55–58 years in the early 1950s to 76 in 2024. But ageing explains only part of the cost increase. Between 2015 and 2025, higher real payments per recipient accounted for 67% of real BRP spending growth, compared with 33% from additional recipients.

On the Treasury accounting basis, BRP spending was Rs55.3bn in 2024/25 - around three times the health budget and two and a half times the education budget. Statistics Mauritius records Rs57.8bn under a different accounting scope. These comparisons do not mean pension spending is directly taken from hospitals or schools, but they show its scale within the budget.

BRP's share of total social expenditure also rose from 33% in 1987/88 to 68% in 2024/25, while education's share fell from 38% to 16.5% and health's from 21.6% to 13.1%.

How much would the reforms save?

The IMF estimates that raising BRP eligibility from 60 to 65 would save 1.7% of GDP. Freezing the separate CSG Retirement Benefit for those aged 65-75 would save another 0.4%. Together, that is 2.1% of GDP at full effect, against a 7.8% BRP bill in 2024/25.

The withdrawn 2026 means test itself (a Rs11,200 income threshold, 50 cents withdrawn per Rs1 above it, tapering to zero at Rs44,310) would touch about 21% of pensioners. That works out to roughly 0.9% of GDP in savings at today's income levels.

This is a static estimate using today's reported incomes, not a forecast, and it does not depend on future demographic change. It shows why a means test aimed only at higher earners moves the needle far less than the total BRP bill might suggest.

CSG and the proposed reset.

Since 2020, CSG has replaced NPF contributions for current workers, but it does not build individual retirement savings. Contributions are collected as a payroll tax and used to finance current social spending.

The proposed State Age Pension (SAP), due from January 2027, would replace BRP and consolidate CSG pension allowances while retaining the transition towards age 65. SAP therefore changes how public pensions are structured, but does not by itself create a dedicated source of funding.

NPPF: the long-term second pillar.

From July 2027, the proposed National Pension and Provident Fund (NPPF) would introduce individual defined-contribution accounts. Combined employee and employer contributions would be 9% on earnings up to Rs50,000 a month and 13.5% above that, up to Rs225,000.

The Pension Reform Commission estimates a worker joining at 25 could eventually replace around 40–52% of final earnings, depending on income. But NPPF cannot finance today's retirees. During the transition, workers would have to fund existing pensions while building savings for their own retirement.

What could a multi-pillar system look like?

One option is to separate the two jobs BRP currently performs: maintain a public income floor, while using NPPF to provide earnings-linked retirement income. A lower universal floor could be combined with targeted support for people whose retirement income remains inadequate. Current pensioners and those close to retirement would require transition protection.

The fiscal and poverty effects cannot be reliably calculated from published aggregate data; they would depend on the floor, top-ups, demographics and transition rules.

Higher-income systems tend to divide retirement support across several pillars. Singapore combines compulsory savings with lifetime income; Canada combines a residence-based pension, contributory CPP and income-tested support; the UK and France similarly separate contribution-based pensions from support for lower-income retirees.

The key difference is structural: poverty protection, earnings replacement and retirement saving are often handled by separate parts of the system rather than one benefit.