A Plan for a Social Register in Mauritius - UNDP · 2014. 2. 3. · A statistician has been allocated to the SRM: Mrs. Naseem Ramjane. Her post should be stabilised. Indeed, her services

A Reorganisation of

the Social Register in Mauritius

Christophe Muller

United Nations Development Program Consultant

(with support from the European Union)

December 2008

2

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to numerous executives and agents from the Ministry of Social

Security, the Central Statistical Office, the Ministry of Finance and Economic

Development, the UNDP and the EU for their collaboration during my mission of

October-November 2008 in Mauritius. I particularly thank Mrs Sheilabai Bappoo

(Minister of Social Security), Mr. H. Bundhoo, Mrs. I. Jugganaikloo and Mr.

Cuvillier for their special efforts that contributed to the success of the mission.

3

Table of Contents

Executive Summary 4

1. Introduction 5

2. The Situation 7

3. Issues and Bottlenecks 9

4. New Resources and Recruitment 12

5. The Living Condition Survey 16

6. The Social Aid Database and Other MSS Files 19

7. The Complementary Survey 20

8. The Survey on Social Institutions 22

9. The Reorganisation of the Core Team 24

10. Nutritional Poverty Line and Poverty Profile 28

11. The Medium Term SRM Plan 39

Appendix 41

4

Executive Summary

The Social Register of Mauritius will be a large database of potential and actual social

programme beneficiaries. It will be an instrument to assist the Ministry in identifying

the beneficiaries of each programme and deciding the level of assistance for each

beneficiary. It will also serve to evaluate social programmes and social safety nets in

Mauritius and improve their performance.

In this report, we discuss various areas of the reorganization of the work for the SRM. It

is therefore a document providing a memorandum and guidelines from the execution of

the SRM. The main items discussed are: the situation; issues and bottlenecks; new

resources and recruitment; the living condition survey; the social aid database and

other MSS files; the complementary survey; the survey on social institutions; the

reorganization of the core team; the nutritional poverty line and poverty profile; the

medium term SRM plan.

A second report will present the estimation of a nutritional poverty profile for Mauritius.

5

1. Introduction

The Social Register for Mauritius (SRM) is developed by the Ministry of Social

Security (from now MSS). The Social Register of Mauritius will be a large database of

potential and actual social programme beneficiaries. It will be an instrument to assist the

Ministry in identifying the beneficiaries of each programme and deciding the level of

assistance for each beneficiary. It will also serve to evaluate social programmes and

social safety nets in Mauritius, and improve their performance.

In Section 2, we examine the situation of the SRM, and the issues and bottlenecks in

Section 3. In Section 4, we discuss the new resources and recruitment. We consider the

progress of the various databases establishment: the living condition survey in Section 5,

the current social aid database and other current MSS files in Section 6; the

complementary survey in Section 7; the survey on Social Institutions in Section 8. Then,

we present the reorganisation of the Core Team in Section 9. In Section 10, we mention

the nutritional poverty lines and the accompanying poverty profiles. The medium term

SRM plan is shown in Section 11.

6

Abbreviations:

CSO: Central Statistical Office.

The Ministry or MSS: The Ministry of Social Security.

UNDP: United Nations Development Program.

EU: European Union.

SRM: Social Register of Mauritius.

MOFED: Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.

DCP: Decentralized Cooperation Program.

ITS: Income Threshold Survey.

HBS: Household Budget Survey.

CS: Complementary Survey.

LCS: Living Conditions Survey.

7

2. The Situation

The mission time was spend in the following areas: (a) review of the SRM teams and

issues, and of data collection operations; (b) capacity building and team organization;

(c) policy strategy; (d) visit to institutions ; (e) recruitment and resource search;

statistical analyses; (f) Global SRM planning.

Several SRM operations are currently in progress:

- The study of the current MSS databases;

- The Complementary Survey of Social Aid beneficiaries;

- The Living Condition Survey;

- The Estimation of Nutritional Poverty Lines and of a Nutritional Poverty Profile;

- The finalisation of the specifications for the SRM database;

- Design of targeting and efficiency analyses of social programs

- A Study of the Social Institutions in Mauritius.

In order to respond to a novel government initiative, we had proposed a fast-track

strategy revising the implementation priority of the SRM tasks. The aim of this

approach was to deliver early policy advice for a new reform, with an announced

deadline in June 2008. As the necessary administration authorizations and resources

were not delivered in due time by various administrations, the reform was abandoned.

We are therefore back to a normal schedule for the implementation of SRM tasks.

8

In particular, it was decided that the Pilot Income Survey (PITS) would be used for

methodological development only, and not to disseminate fragile official statistics.

9

3. Issues and Bottlenecks

Several issues were identified and solved during the mission, much thanks to a decisive

intervention of the Minister of Social Security.

At the beginning of the mission, only about half the necessary working space had been

freed for SRM operations. This was an issue for current operations that are being too

squeezed to be efficient. For example, office accommodation should be made available

to CISD Officers who are capturing the data collected for the Complementary Survey.

Moreover, it will be increasingly difficult to justify the recruitment of new consultants

and staff if no corresponding space is freed.

I am glad to report that during the mission, and in the few days following it, the

remaining working space has been found and allocated.

Second, some delays in payment of agent fees had been recognized as one of the main

reason for delays in the collection and data capture of the Complementary Survey.

During the mission, clear instructions were given for immediate payment of these fees.

This could largely contribute to accelerating these operations.

However, additional efforts should be devoted to speed up the collection and the data

entry for the Complementary Survey. This is primarily the responsibility of the first cell

of the Core Team to identify the issues and find appropriate solutions. Naturally, the

10

head of the Core Team, Mrs. Jaganaikloo, will support them in removing the main

obstacles to the operations of the Complementary Survey.

In general, the one main reason of delays in various SRM operations has been the

difficulty to obtain timely administrative authorizations, notably when such trivial tasks

as approving survey questionnaires have to be carried out in government meetings. I

note that opinions on this matter vary. In particular, concerns have been expressed that

consultations in this area is important because of the population susceptibilities. My

own opinion is that it would be the interest of economic policy in Mauritius to leave the

responsibility of questionnaire approval to the director of CSO or to high-level civil

servants in the concerned Ministries.

Capacity building is clearly another bottle-neck if MSS is going to be able to manage

social program databases autonomously and permanently. At the moment, the capacity

is quasi absent. Therefore, substantial efforts are devoted, notably with UNDP funding,

in order to raise the capacity of MSS to process and analyse their own data. Some

demonstrations of the use of Stata software for statistical analyses were performed

during the mission. Longer training sessions will be given by the new UNDP National

Consultant.

A general concern is the capacity of the concerned services and teams to deliver even

simple outputs consistently. For example, from the end of the mission we tried to have

listed the names of the persons met during the mission for several weeks without

obtaining any result, even after contacting several civil servants. So, noting failed

11

procedures and proposing improvements will be central for MSS to being able to

manage its programs. This could be partly the responsibility of the head of the Core

Team.

Also, to ensure continuity, the core team members should understand the tasks clearly

so that the number two can step in when number one is not there.

Finally, a crucial orientation of the SRM operations is to favour collaboration of UNDP

experts with local staff as opposed to task substitution. The tasks that will become the

permanent missions of MSS have to be progressively performed by MSS agents,

starting with the Core Team experts. To reach this situation the UNDP National

Consultants have been instructed to provide support, while allowing substantial task

responsibilities of the MSS agents.

12

4. New Resources and Recruitment

4.1. Resource needs

During a past mission, new resources had been identified as badly needed for the SRM.

Some of these resources were:

- At least one full-time expert of the current social security data files, familiar

with the whole social protection system in Mauritius. He or she must be able to

carry out simple statistical analyses on a computer. He or she must also be

conversant with the current database management system.

- A local statistician able to support the data management and the statistical

analysis of the databases being produced.

- Some clerical staff.

- Some working space.

- Statistical software and computers, accompanied by training sessions for the

staff involved in the SRM project.

- Massive support from CSO, and perhaps other institutions for data management

and statistical analysis of MSS data files themselves.

Although some of these resources are hard to come by, substantial progress has been

reached in several areas.

13

4.2. Details about staff resources

Mrs. Indira Jaganaikloo is the Head of the SRM Core Team. She must be provided only

information for the project as soon as available, and be invited at all SRM meetings.

Mr. Chennu was designated as the main MSS responsible technically for the

management of the SRM database, assisted by other MSS staff and Mr. Daya Bundhoo,

one of the UNDP national consultants. He shall lead the specification and the computer-

implementation of the new SRM database at Rose Hill.

A statistician has been allocated to the SRM: Mrs. Naseem Ramjane. Her post should be

stabilised. Indeed, her services will be needed for many years, and this even just for

participating in the building of the SRM. Once the SRM is in place, she could be the

person in charge of producing statistical analyses for the Ministry from the SRM data.

The recruitment of a new UNDP National Consultant was finalised during the mission.

Miss Shahin Bhugaloo has been recruited and will start her new job at MSS in end

November. Her main role will be to support SRM analyses and promote dynamism in

the Core Team operations, notably for data processing and data analyses. For this, she

will collaborate with the Head of the Core Team to decide what the appropriate

approaches to develop are.

She will organise Stata training sessions in order to upgrade the Core Team skills and

allow them to proceed with data analyses.

14

In the beginning of her mission, she will have to read a large amount of documents,

among which the diverse SRM reports. She will also have to gain familiarity with the

numerous questionnaires and data sets used for the SRM operations.

Among other tasks, she will be a communication officer between MSS, UNDP and the

UNDP international consultant, she will be involved into detecting problems and

proposing solutions. This will imply keeping decision-makers informed about any

serious arising issue and writing a short report at the end of each week.

Finally, she will participate in various analyses, under the guidance of the UNDP

international consultant. Analyses should be carried out as much as possible in

collaboration with the Core Team experts, better: BY the Core Team experts with the

national consultant’s help.

4.3. Details about equipment resources

Several micro-computers and Stata packages have been received at MSS for the SRM.

They have been installed on computers during the mission. It is now necessary to train

the agents who will be involved in data processing and analyses.

4.4. Details on training resources

The new SRM National Consultant, Ms. Shahin Bhugaloo will provide training sessions

on Stata to MSS agents.

15

Once trained, the MSS agents should be able to share some of the burden of SRM data

management and analysis.

We aim at reaching this situation as soon as possible by providing intensive training in

December 2008.

16

5. The Living Conditions Survey (LCS)

The LCS has been designed so as to provide information on basic needs by

consumption category (food, clothing, housing, etc). From this information, we shall be

able to estimate monetary assessments of each of these basic needs. Finally, a demand

system and welfare model will used to extrapolate to the total monetary poverty line

from these basic monetary needs. The corresponding models for all these stages have

been tested using the PITS and HBS data. They will be adjusted to the coming LCS data.

Then, the sequence yielding the income thresholds from LCS data is: (1) Living

Condition Survey; (2) Design of the economic models used in the calculation; (3)

Design of the statistical methods for estimation; (4) Estimation of the income thresholds.

We shall measure basic needs using several information sets: (1) consumption data from

HBS (Household Budget Survey); (2) Subjective question about own household needs

from LCS; (3) Subjective questions about the poor in general from LCS; (3) Expert

opinions, especially from HBS enumerators and supervisors. The latter information was

obtained internally at CSO using the LCS questionnaire.

About 2,240 households will be surveyed in the LCS. The LCS sample will be a

subsample of the 6,720 households that have been surveyed in the Household Budget

Survey (HBS).

17

A novel nutritional table for Mauritius has been calculated by the SRM statistician

under the guidance of the UNDP international consultant. The table has already been

used to convert food expenditure observed in the HBS into calorie intakes. Then,

assuming that the food basic needs be defined in terms of nutritional minima, we were

able to use these data to estimate nutritional poverty lines for Mauritius.

Nutritional equivalence scales have also been defined during the mission. Alternatively,

the LCS data will be used, to define more general equivalence scales.

We planned to collect the national identity numbers for all members in households

surveyed during the LCS. This was in order to match LCS data with SRM data.

Unfortunately, the collection of the National Identification Number was rejected.

Therefore, we are constrained to capture the complete names of all household members

in order to replace the missing National Identification Numbers. These names will be

used to match the LCS data with MSS databases. However, in contrast with what could

have been done with National Identification Numbers, some preparatory manual work

will have to be done to make sure that the names are identically written in the files to be

matched. This may generate delays.

The collection of the Living Condition Survey is scheduled to start on 17 November

2008 and to end on 8 December 2008.

Note that the pilot ITS data has been statistically analysed. This analysis will be useful

to design new economic models for income thresholds based on basic needs. Moreover,

18

statistical models and estimation techniques has been tested in order to obtain a set of

family income thresholds that we shall be able to compare with the situations of the

social aid beneficiaries. All these methods will be implemented when the LCS data is

available.

19

6. The Current Social Aid Database and Other Current

MSS Files

The study of the current social aid data involves several stages: Conversion of data into

Stata and data organisation; Variable definitions and calculus; Statistical analysis.

Early findings of the statistical analysis show that most variables in the current database

are unusable because of massive errors or missing values. For example, a variable as

elementary to collect as the profession of the beneficiary is only available in about 15

percent of the cases.

Moreover, a complete recoding of most variables is necessary in this database. We

expect to find additional data issues during the data analysis. In these conditions the

Complementary Survey appears as fully justified. No serious management and analysis

of social aid can be done without basic information on beneficiaries.

Complete descriptive statistics of the families receiving social aid will be estimated. The

aim is to know better the socio-economic characteristics of these families. For this, we

shall study the distribution of the beneficiary families across socio-demographic and

economic categories.

20

7. Complementary Survey

The first round of the complementary survey, centred on the families of the social aid

beneficiaries, involves the following stages: Questionnaire design; Survey organisation

and logistics; Collection execution; Data entry and cleaning; Conversion of data into

Stata and data organisation; Variable definitions and calculus; Merge of the

complementary survey data with the Social Aid data.

At the time of the mission the questionnaire and survey system had been designed.

However, only 5000 questionnaires had been filled, while just 1500 questionnaires had

been processed for data capture. So, the operations are very late on schedule.

The delays were attributed to some MSS agents not being paid their fees. This issue has

been solved after an intervention of the Minister. We therefore expect the collection and

data capture operations to accelerate.

Another major issue was that there was not enough office space freed for dealing with

questionnaire checks and data capture. Some new space was found during and just after

the mission, which should contribute to alleviate this issue. Moreover, it has been

decided to delegate the questionnaire checks to other agents in order to free the time of

the Core Team experts.

The complete data is scheduled to be ready for analysis in January 2009.

21

The constitution of the database of the Complementary Survey may be useful to other

initiatives pursued by MSS, for example the new project of database about handicapped

people in Mauritius. It is recommended that some coordination be put in place, notably

to check that information pieces useful to the handicapped person project are not

already collected through the Complementary Survey.

As the Complementary Survey now covers the beneficiaries of the Trust Fund,

simulations of the efficiency of this Fund and recommendations for its improvement

will be possible in the future.

22

8. The Survey on Social Institutions

A survey on social institutions has been conducted by MSS for the SRM. The data is

now ready for the analysis.

A new statistical and economic study of the data on social institution collected by MSS

is under progress. The objectives of this study are diverse: (1) to draw a picture of what

the Mauritian social system is; (2) to provide guidelines in order to decide the list of

schemes to include in the SRM; (3) to give hints about possible policy directions for

social safety nets; (4) to clarify reorganisation issues of the social system in Mauritius.

New procedures for fast data transfer from the current MSS databases to ASCII files

have now been put in place.

Simple statistical analyses and graphs of the social institution survey database are being

carried out by the Core Team under the guidance of the UNDP international consultant

and with the support of a UNDP national consultant. A work program for the Core

Team has been established during the mission for these analyses. From the results of

these analyses, provisional definitions of MSS missions will be constructed and used to

define several social scheme categories.

The work has been deliberately designed as a capacity building process. Then, the first

statistical processing tasks to conduct are simple: calculus of tables of totals or means of

variables, and drawing of histograms or graphs describing the distribution of variables.

23

The selected variables are for each program: the number of beneficiaries, the budget and

the mean budget benefit. These tables and graphs will be implemented for the whole set

of schemes, and also by categories of schemes defined by: the type of scheme;

objectives; target group; type of criteria; period started.

Beyond the interest of the training provided, these operations will deliver concrete

results. A selection of statistical results will be included in the report on social

institutions that is in progress.

24

9. The Reorganisation of the Core Team

The Head of the Core Team is Mrs. Indira Jaganaikloo. She should be invited at all

meetings related to SRM and Safety Nets in Mauritius, and informed of any matters

connected to SRM.

The work of the Core Team has been reorganised with the collaboration and under the

direction of Mrs. Indira Jaganaikloo. The questionnaire checks that are currently taking

much of the time of the Core Team experts will be delegated to MSS agents directly

involved in survey supervision. Thus, enough Core Team expert time will be freed for

management and analysis tasks, which are their main responsibilities.

The Core Team work should be recognized, which is the counter-part of the

responsibility they are asked to show.

It has been decided that the Core Team experts would now focus on their management

and analysis responsibilities. For this, two specialised cells have been formed.

The first cell, composed of Mrs. Sareeta Vythilingum and Mrs. Shahnaz Amodine, will

be in charge of the Complementary Survey administration and management. They will

intervene in the stages of collection, logistics, survey administration, data entry, data

treatment and data analysis. In particular, the latter activities will be performed using

the software Stata. They will concentrate their analyses activities mostly on the

25

Complementary Survey data. In a sense, they will become the primary MSS experts of

these data.

The second cell, composed of Mrs. Indira Jaganaikloo and Miss Tosheena Canyhe, will

intervene more lightly in the Complementary Survey operations. In contrast, they will

get more involved in data treatment and data analyses for all the other datasets handled

for the SRM: Current MSS databases, Institution Survey data, Household Budget

Survey data, Living Condition Survey data, etc.

In particular, a draft analysis plan for the Social Institution data has been established

during the mission. Beyond the interest of analysing such data for MSS policies, the

analyses will be designed in progressive stages in order to provide an on-the-job

training opportunity. More detailed guidelines will follow as the Core Team experts

work their way up in the knowledge of the Stata software package.

For this, they must much improve their skills in statistical analyses based on the

software Stata. Then, advanced Stata training will be organised by the new UNDP

National Consultant, Miss Shahin Bhugaloo. The training will take place mostly in the

form of on-the-job training.

As mentioned before, Core Team experts may be involved in the analysis of several

data sets: the data collected by the social institution survey conducted for the SRM; the

current MSS data files still currently used for the management of the social programs;

the Complementary Survey data and the final SRM data; the data used for poverty

analyses (Household Budget Surveys and Living Condition Survey).

26

For this the conversion into Stata format of all the current MSS data files pertaining to

the diverse social programs should be done. Then, it will be possible to examine the

possibilities of aggregating the various available databases, using Stata.

Of course, Core Team experts will be supported by UNDP international and national

consultants in all their analyses.

To allow for the success of the Core Team operations, improvement in the

administrative support from the other services of MSS is necessary. The delays should

be minimised, notably as far as the Complementary Survey is concerned.

Finally, a third MSS Team will be organised at Rose Hill, where a lot of space is

available. A UNDP National Consultant will support the building of this team, of which

main roles are the SRM specifications and installation of the SRM computer system at

Rose Hill. For this, they should keep in touch with Mrs. Sooben, in charge of

coordinating activities related to computer systems at MSS.

Moreover, the MSS Team at Rose Hill will provide support to the operations of the

Complementary Survey, and help the extension of this survey to other MSS programs

than the Social Aid program.

A new clerk officer, Miss Tosheena Canyhe, has just joined the Core Team. Her

contribution is welcome, notably for using computers and software packages, an area

27

where she is relatively advanced. A consequence of this is that some way of promoting

her to a level comparable to the other Core Team experts should be considered.

28

10. Nutritional Poverty Lines and Poverty Profiles

A set of nutritional poverty lines has been estimated jointly with associated poverty

rates. The estimates of the nutritional profile are reported in a specific report. This work

was performed in collaboration with CSO and MSS staff.

Once the matching of the HBS, LCS and SRM file is done, for each relevant socio-

demographic and economic category, we shall be able to estimate the percentage of

social program beneficiary families above and below the nutritional poverty line.

A presentation on poverty lines methodology was requested by CSO during the mission.

It was delivered on Wednesday 29 October 2008 at MSS. The following pages are taken

from this PowerPoint presentation.

29

Measuring Poverty

• Many Poverty Indices

• Based on One Poverty Line (or Threshold)

• Or a few alternative poverty lines with distinct meanings

• Perhaps the most influential technical step in poverty measurement

Usefulness for SRM

• Knowing the poor: a priority target of the social system

• Unifying the discussion about social issues

• Assessing the performance of present social programs (counting the poor reached and the ones missed)

• Designing more efficient social programs: minimizing misery and poverty

30

A long literature

• Many qualitative, often multidimensional approaches: DCP expertise

• Quantitative approaches based on income or total expenditure

• The general idea is to assess the living standard level corresponding to some definition of BASIC NEEDS

• Other approach: subjective lines

Practical implementation

• Many ad hoc ‘expert’ definition of a basket of basic needs (e.g. US)

• Avoiding to do it (fraction of median or mean living standards, e.g. EU)

• More serious practice: nutritional subsistence minima

• The poor ~ the hungry

• 2100 calories per day per male adult

• Perhaps 2700 for active people

31

Which Basic Needs?

• Nutritional minima little adapted to Mauritius, while still useful to study a subpopulation of ‘extremely poor people’

• More extended capture of basic needs are necessary for Mauritius

• Living Conditions Survey

• Elaborate algorithm to extract relevant information about the perception of poverty by Mauritian households

Nutritional ‘Food-poverty’ threshold

• Converting 2100 calories a day per adult into monetary equivalent

• Zf = 2100 x price of a calorie

• Accounting for sub-strata differences

• Extracting the calorie price from budget survey information

32

An output from SRM: Nutritional results

• Exp: mean food value / mean caloric content

• Nutritional table to convert record of consumption quantities into calories

• But need to characterize the typical consumption of the poor

• Correcting for nutritional equivalence scales

• Correcting for environment differences (e.g. price deflation) --- Finally: Zf

Extrapolating to total expenditure

• Estimation of a demand system or at least an Engel Curve for food consumption:

• Food expenditure share

= f(income, other variables)

• Complications in the specification and estimation method

• Based on HBS data

33

The Solution

• Let Z be the global poverty line

• Zf/Z = f(Z, other variables)

• Numerical solution in Z

• Many tries with different estimation methods and Zf

With other basic needs

• Same type of extrapolation with other basic needs estimates instead of Zf

• One obtains ‘Needs-specific Poverty Lines’

• At the end: a rule of combination of the diverse Z obtained from different basic needs

• One obtains the ‘General Poverty Line’

• If just based on nutritional needs: the ‘Nutritional Poverty Line’

34

‘Difference with others’

• Difference across organizations: None fundamentally (at least for the nutritional poverty line)

• Competent people agree

• In practice, few careful implementations of the whole process

• We introduce improvements at each stage

• Important to be able to control the different stages: need experience and knowing what you do

• Important to adjust and validate each stage with a serious data analysis (see Naseem)

• We look at basic needs adapted to Mauritius

35

Mauritius advances for the nutritional poverty line

• More careful nutritional table (one of SRM outputs - Naseem)

• More flexible specification of equations (Quadratic Almost Ideal System)

• More sophisticated estimation methods (robust estimators, correction endogeneity issues, focus on the poor)

• Sampling errors

Mauritius advances for the general poverty line

• Interviews about basic needs• A lot of intelligence in the questionnaire to

describe basic needs in terms of Mauritian households

• Use of opinions about ‘other households’• Control by self-assessment and expert opinions:

PITS successful• Selection of ‘rational answerers’ by comparisons

of self-assessment of some basic needs with actual consumption expenditure

36

• Robust estimation of central tendencies of basic needs

• We only need a small fraction of ‘valid responses’

• Extrapolation from five household types

• Moreover, information to estimate equivalence scales specific to Mauritius can be extracted from the same data

Poverty estimation

• Entering the estimated poverty lines in the poverty formula to estimate:

• (1/N) i (1– yi /z)α 1[yi < z]

• Incorporating equivalence scales• Accounting for sampling scheme• Sampling standard errors• Poverty profile: by subpopulations (e.g. activity

sectors)

37

Difference with poverty map

• A refinement of poverty estimation promoted by the World Bank

• Elbers, Lanjow and Lanjouw (Econometrica, 2003)

• Takes advantage of simultaneous census and household survey data

• Can build on SRM output (poverty line)

• Extrapolate living standards from census information

• Allow poverty estimation at very disaggregated geographical level (district?).

• Can be very useful

• E.g. for development project localization

• Dependent on the quality of the extrapolation model used, census quality and various stochastic hypotheses

• One must be well aware of what one is doing

38

Using poverty line for SRM

• Number and proportion of the poor benefiting from social aid? And other programs?

• Number and proportion of the poor missed by a given social program?

• Proportion of budget wasted by servicing non-target populations?

• More complicated indicators of program efficiency

Improving the efficiency of social programs

• Show where weaknesses of the programs are

• Actions can be taken to alleviate these weaknesses where the poor are concerned

• Alternative program designs can be tested

• Proxy-means approaches can be calibrated

• The impact of aggregating programs on the poor can be assessed (See Core Team report)

39

11. Medium Term Plan

The Minister of Social Security, Mrs Sheilabai Bappoo, has wished that a stronger

impulsion be given to the SRM operations.

The Medium Term SRM plan responds to her request and is as follows.

1. Solving SRM bottleneck issues: recruitment, space, payment of fees: immediate

action.

2. Estimation of a Nutritional Poverty line (extreme poverty) and of a Nutritional

(Extreme) Poverty Profile: November-December 2008.

3. Analysis of the current MSS databases for social programs and diagnostic:

December 2008.

4. End of the first phase of the data collection of the Complementary Survey

(Social Aid, NHDC and Trust Fund): data expected January 2008.

5. Collection of the Living Condition Survey: data expected January 2009.

6. Matching of the data from the Complementary Survey and the Living Condition

Survey.

7. Estimation of a General Poverty line and a General Poverty Profile for

Mauritius: February-March 2009.

8. Review of the social assistance institutions in Mauritius, statistical analysis and

proposal of rationalization: April 2009.

9. Analysis of the newly collected data (Complementary Survey) and estimation of

the profile of the social aid beneficiaries in Mauritius: April-May 2009.

10. Validation of the SRM specifications and software implementation: July 2009.

40

11. Targeting analyses of the Social Aid program, and proposal of improvement:

September 2009.

12. Study of improved proxy-means tests for social programs: November 2009.

13. Data collection of the Complementary Survey (other schemes): Over the whole

period.

41

Appendix: Persons met during the mission:

NAME DESIGNATION Institution

Mrs. Sheilabai Bappoo Minister MSS

Mr A.Veerasamy Permanent Secretary MSS

Mr N. Soobratty Principal Assistant

Secretary

MSS

Mrs. J. Sooben Principal Assistant

Secretary

MSS

Mr A. Gopaul Commissioner,

Social Security

MSS

Mrs. Yasmine

Cassimally

Deputy Director CSO

Mr. Harish Bundhoo Director CSO

Mr. Sandrasagarren

Naidu

Programme

Coordinator

DCP

Mr. Claudio Caldarone UN Resident Co-

ordinator, UNDP

Resident

Representative

UNDP

Mr. Emmanuel Cuvillier UN Lead Economist UNDP

Mrs. Magda Verdickt UN Economist UNDP

Mrs. Naseem Ramjan Acting Statistician CSO

Mr. Sanjeev Bhonoo Statistician CSO

Daya Bundhoo National Consultant UNDP

Shahin Bhugaloo National Consultant UNDP

Rajan Chennu Principal Social

Security Officer

MSS

Indira Jaganaikloo Principal Social

Security Officer.

Head of the SRM

Core Team

MSS

Ms. Pratima Bengaroo Assistant Secretary MSS

Mr. K. Kisto Chief Information

Officer

MSS

Mr. N. Deerpalsing Senior Adviser on

Pension and Social

Insurance

MSS

Ms. Meenakshee

Singelee

Trainee European

Commission

Ms. Khoudijah

Maudarbocus-Boodoo

Private Sector

Development

Specialist

The World

Bank

Mr. Achim Schaffert Head of Mauritius

Section

European

Union

42

Mr. José Allet Acting Project

Manager

Trust

Fund/MOFED

Mrs. S. Ramkisson Field Officer Trust

Fund/MOFED

Mr. S. Naidu Director DCP

Mr. Janaab Mownah

System Analyst MOFEE

Mrs. Shahnaz Amodine

Higher Social

Security Officer

MSS

Mrs. Sareeta

Vythilingum

Higher Social

Security Officer.

MSS

Dr. Sorefan Consultant MSS

Mr. N. Muneesamy Programme Officer UNDP

Mr. A. Kitchen Intem UNDP

Mr. A. Dabee-Busawon Project Manager UNDP

Mr. F. Fatadin Deputy

Commissioner

MSS

Mr. J.K. Sobhee Acting CAB

Coordinator

Ministry of

Environment

and NDU

Mr. T. Bhoyroo Assistant

Commissioner

MSS

Andy Neill Expert European

Union