Why a trading house sets up in Mauritius
Position on the Asia–Africa axis, simultaneous membership of several regional integration blocs, a hybrid commercial law: the reasons are not only fiscal.
The SELA International team
The question addressed
What are the advantages of Mauritius for international trade?
Key takeaway
Mauritius combines four advantages for a trading company: a position on the shipping routes linking Asia to East and Southern Africa; simultaneous membership of SADC, COMESA and the AfCFTA; a mixed legal system — French-inspired civil law and common law — that makes contracts legible to counterparties from both legal worlds; and an extensive network of double-taxation treaties. Mauritius ranked first in Africa and thirteenth worldwide in the last edition of the World Bank’s Doing Business report (2020), since discontinued.
The island lies roughly 2,000 kilometres off the coast of Mozambique, on one of the main axes connecting Asian production basins to African markets. Port Louis operates a container terminal serving as a transshipment point for the western Indian Ocean region.
Multiple regional memberships
Mauritius is a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Indian Ocean Commission and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Goods processed or sufficiently worked in Mauritius may, subject to the applicable rules of origin, enter several of those spaces on preferential terms.
A hybrid law, legible from both sides
Mauritian law combines French-inspired civil and commercial law — a Civil Code and a Commercial Code — with a strong English common-law influence in procedure, evidence and company law. For a trading house whose suppliers are Asian and whose customers are African or European, that duality considerably eases contract drafting: both families of counterparty recognise their own legal reflexes in the same document.
What it changes in practice
- A time zone (UTC+4) overlapping the Asian working day in the morning and the European one in the afternoon.
- A banking centre familiar with trade finance instruments: documentary credits, documentary collections, performance guarantees.
- A bilingual French–English talent pool, a practical condition for working across both commercial networks.
SELA INTERNATIONAL LTD is registered in Mauritius and operates from Port Louis, 4th Floor, Hennessy Tower, Pope Hennessy Street.