In Reunion, the president of the area protests towards the sale by the State of a luxurious resort to international traders | EUROtoday

“An act of extreme gravity.” President of the Regional Council of La Réunion, Huguette Bello (varied left) weighed her phrases to sentence the sale by the State to the non-public Mauritian group IBL, of a 6.8 hectare plot housing one of many island's stunning motels. Located on a white sand seaside and going through the translucent waters of the Hermitage lagoon, the Lux Saint-Gilles, a five-star institution, has 174 rooms and employs greater than 250 folks.

In a movement voted on September 6, the neighborhood chaired by Mr.^me Bello considers that the switch of a “land as strategic as this to an external player turns its back on the interests of Reunion Island and therefore of France.” M^me Bello introduced that the neighborhood would take authorized motion to forestall this switch to a “foreign country” of a “strategic and emblematic location of the tourist offer” for an estimated quantity of 28 million euros.

This isn’t the primary time that the elected official from Reunion Island, whose title was talked about in July because the candidate of the New Popular Front for the put up of Prime Minister, has posed as a defender of the “Reunion economic patriotism”. Huguette Bello had already raised this difficulty to oppose the merger between the French airways Air Austral – based mostly in Reunion Island – and Corsair. An possibility favored by the State in 2022 to avoid wasting the 2 entities in nice monetary problem. The regional president had then highlighted the challenges of opening up the island's airspace.

A “narrow vision of the economy”

By elevating this theme once more, she additionally needs to level out that different massive Reunion corporations, within the retail, building and water sectors, have fallen into the arms of traders from Mauritius, the neighbouring island greater than 2 hundred kilometres away. The native sugar group Quartier Français has been absorbed by the French large Tereos. Furthermore, many native manufacturers are owned by the West Indian group Hayot. “The centre of gravity of local economic decisions is increasingly slipping away from Reunion, notes an advisor to M.^me Beautiful. The profits go back outside.”

Applied to the hotel sector, the concepts of “Reunion economic patriotism” and of “safety of strategic pursuits” However, locals appear to have problem convincing the island's financial circles, who stay cautious on the topic. All the extra so since a few of M's opponents^me Bello accuses him of autonomist designs, with a danger of closing Reunion Island in on itself.

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