🇲🇺 A 128-page bill quietly reshapes taxes, pensions and the state's own books

A 128-page bill quietly reshapes taxes, pensions and the state's own books

The Finance Bill 2026 reached Parliament on Tuesday, all 128 pages of it, turning the budget read out weeks ago into enforceable law. Pensions grabbed every headline, but the heavier machinery sits deeper in the text. Tax officials gain sharper powers, online gambling gets fresh rules, and public bodies lose the room to hide what they owe.

Article 15 rewrites the Public Debt Management Act. Every state entity must now declare its full financial liabilities, guarantees and future pension obligations, not just the loans on its books. From the 2029/30 financial year, central government must file accounts within four months of the close, down from six.

For households, the clause that bites first is the tighter pension rule: the state age pension now asks for 15 years of residency after you turn 40. A budget speech makes promises. A finance bill makes them stick.

The pension clause will dominate the pub talk. The debt disclosure rule is the one auditors will remember.

SBM Holdings sidelines its group CEO as an internal probe lands

Raoul Gufflet is out of the driver's seat at SBM Holdings, the island's biggest banking group, at least for now. The board suspended its group chief executive with immediate effect in a communique dated 28 July, pointing to an internal investigation it has not spelled out in public.

SBM Holdings is majority owned by the state, so a suspension at the very top is never only a boardroom matter. What the investigation found, and what happens to Gufflet next, the board is keeping firmly to itself for now.

Port-Louis closes the year Rs 286 million in the red

The capital's books do not balance. Port-Louis ended 2024/25 with a Rs 286 million deficit, even as local tax receipts rose, according to the annual report filed this month at the Parliament library.

Cash is the sharper worry, net treasury slipped to minus Rs 33.8 million by 30 June 2025, dragged down by wage bills, cleaning contracts and investment grants that never showed up. Total assets fell to Rs 4.85 billion from Rs 5.10 billion a year earlier.

Man arrested over the death threats to reporters outside the FCC

Teeruth Prasad Degnarain was arrested on Wednesday morning by Moka CID over Monday night's scenes outside the Financial Crimes Commission, where he had threatened journalists covering former PM Pravind Jugnauth's questioning. Police opposed bail; he faces a provisional charge under the ICT Act and returns to court next week.

23 officers pulled from duty for drug trafficking since 2014

Since 2014, 23 police officers have been arrested or barred from service over drug trafficking, spread across 18 separate cases, a figure that surfaced in a parliamentary reply. That is more than two a year, inside the one force meant to be dismantling the trade.

Shorts

Rs 14 million in drugs seized at Baie-du-Tombeau – A man of 26 was held by drug officers on Wednesday.

Sabre attack on a vendor at Plaine-Verte – A street trader of 52 filed a complaint after a row turned bloody.

Pension protester camps outside Parliament – Malina spent the night outside the National Assembly to fight the reform.

Two new commissioners for the watchdog – The President named Naimduth Bissessur and Vinesh Boodhoo to Competition Commission.

Smoke scare at the La Tour-Koenig plant – Residents panicked at fumes from the CMT textile plant; officials called it water vapour.

736,026

visitors reached Mauritius between January and 15 July, up 1.9% on last year, a slow but steady climb for the tourism engine that pays a big share of the island's wages.

9.83 seconds

was all it took Cameroon's Emmanuel Eseme to win the Commonwealth Games 100m, a new record set through the Glasgow rain.

$83.3 million

is the defamation payout Donald Trump wants the Supreme Court to erase, arguing presidential immunity should shield him from E. Jean Carroll's win.

Congo militia tied to the Rwandan genocide agrees to disarm

The FDLR, a Rwandan Hutu militia with roots in the 1994 genocide, has agreed to lay down its weapons in eastern Congo. Its disarmament is a central plank of the peace deal Washington brokered between Kinshasa and Kigali.

Whether fighters really hand over guns, rather than melt back into the hills, is the test that has broken every deal here before it.

Gabon and Equatorial Guinea bury a half-century island row

Gabon and Equatorial Guinea ended a quarrel of 50 years on Tuesday, agreeing who owns three tiny islands in the Gulf of Guinea.

Kenya opens a probe into 15 elephant deaths

What is killing the elephants of Amboseli? Kenya has opened an investigation after 15 died at the park in a single month.

US and Iran trade direct blows as oil jumps again

The Middle East slid a notch closer to open war. US and Saudi forces struck groups Iran backs in Iraq while Iran hit US positions and tankers, and crude climbed more than 3%.

For an island that imports every drop of its fuel, that last number is the one to watch. A war a continent away still lands on pump price in Port-Louis.

Russia charges Telegram's founder with aiding terror

Russia has charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with aiding terrorism and wants him arrested, a sharp turn against an app the Kremlin once mostly tolerated.

Berlin police kill the driver behind the Pride attack

Berlin police shot dead the man who drove a car into Pride crowds, killing one and hurting 29; a second suspect walked free as a claim of responsibility surfaced.

Washington slams the door on China's humanoid robots

The Trump administration and the FCC, the US telecoms regulator, have banned imports of Chinese humanoid robots and power inverters, citing national security.

The worry is not marauding androids but data and control: a networked robot, or the box that runs your solar panels, is also a sensor someone abroad might quietly switch off. That is the robot future, already a border dispute.

🙏 Merci, à demain! 👋

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