Housing Finance in Mauritius

Overview

This profile is also available in French here.

To download a PDF version of the full 2023 Mauritius  country profile, click here.

Mauritius is a 2,040-square-kilometer island in the south-west Indian Ocean. 41% of the total population lives in urban areas, with 621 people per km2. With an unemployment rate of 8.6%, Mauritius is regarded as an upper-middle-income nation. Mauritius’s economy contracted by 14.9% in 2020 but grew by 4% in 2021, official figures show. The consumer price index rose from 103.7 in 2019 to 110.6 in 2021, resulting in a steep rise in inflation levels. The current account deficit remains large, at 13.7%, compared to 9.2% in 2020, as tourism, the country’s main income stream, remains low. The tourism industry contributed 19.5% of GDP in 2019, but just 2% of it in 2021.

Affordable housing is not within everyone’s reach in Mauritius. An apartment in the city centre costs Rs 55,485 (US$ 1,215.18) per square metre on average.Inflation in the country, combined with rising construction costs, make housing largely unaffordable. The price of a 50kg bag of cement costs Rs263 (US$5.76) up 43% from 2020, and is expected to rise by 23% over two years.

The credit granted to Mauritian households amounted to Rs127.41 billion (US$2.79 billion) at the end of January 2022, of which two-thirds (67%) consisted of mortgages. With the majority of the population (89%) having a bank account, the debt levels of households have increased by Rs 9.81 million (US $214,849) over the last year. Non-performing loans in relation to total loans were valued at 5.3% in September 2021, down from 6.1% in September 2020.

A Rs 12 billion (US$ 262.81 million) programme to build 12,000 social housing units has been in place since 2020.In the fiscal year 2021–2022, an estimated $100 million will be distributed. This is in an effort to give citizens better access to financing and a larger supply of housing.

The different government cuts appear to have had an effect on rent costs. One-bedroom apartments cost Rs 17,285.71 (US$378.57) to rent in the city centre and Rs 8,932.2 (US$195.62) outside of it. It should be noted that the rent for the same apartment has decreased by 9.3% and 10.7%, respectively, to Rs 15,666.67 (US$343.11) in the city centre and Rs 7,978.33 (US$174.73) outside the center. However, given the high cost of living caused by inflation and the rise in the cost of building materials, rent costs should be expected to rise

Find out more information on the housing finance sector of Mauritius, including key stakeholders, important policies and housing affordability:


Each year, CAHF publishes its Housing Finance in Africa Yearbook. The profile above is from the 2023 edition, which has up-to-date profiles for 55 African countries.

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