Mauritius worked hard to earn its special status, and the country might have to work harder to keep it. Its advantages as an offshore investment centre are being whittled away year by year, as the developing economies on which it relies revisit their taxation treaties with the island. For more than 20 years, favourable tax treaties with India and China have formed the backbone of Mauritius’s financial sector, which is the biggest contributor to its gross domestic product.

In 2004, India, China and Indonesia together received 78 per cent of the nearly $60bn – the vast bulk of it to India – in foreign investment that flowed through Mauritius. International investors reaped huge tax benefits by putting their money into Mauritius-based companies that used the tax treaties to invest in third countries.