I am honoured to present Mauritius Telecom’s Annual Report for 2021.

Our country and the world at large are doing their best to cope with the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Major disruptions in logistics and supply chains, rising prices generally and a depressed business, investment and consumer mood are just some of the challenges we all have been facing.

Fortunately, our resilience as an industry, our early decisions as a group and our creativity as a team have enabled Mauritius Telecom to maintain sound results despite the circumstances.

We have maintained profitabilit , improved service levels, launched very innovative offers, enhanced the wellness of our staff, stood by the population in trying times and continued to grow significantl on all fronts. At the time of writing, in May 2022, we have now passed the landmark figu e of one million mobile customers, no mean feat in a country with a population of nearly 1.3 million.

Financial results

For the year 2021, I am proud to report the excellent performance of Mauritius Telecom with a net profit of Rs 594 million. The Group’s revenue grew by +4.5% over the year to reach Rs 10.9 billion. At Rs 8.2 billion, gross profit also showed year-on-year growth of +4.1%.

This performance is exceptional as highlighted by our board especially given that we were directly and financially impacted by: a lack of revenue in inbound roaming, increase in the exchange rates causing our costs to soar, an increase in staff costs following a stipulated salary negotiation exercise, a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) requested by our staff and approved by the Board of Directors amounting to Rs 375m, disrupted worldwide logistics causing a lack of stock for the year end and a business market reducing its consumption due to economic challenges.

Mauritius Telecom, standing by the nation

We have remained steadfast in our commitment to our people and country, helping the authorities and standing by the nation.

beSafeMoris was critical in the dissemination of officia information. The digital work-access permits (WAP), for the second consecutive year, allowed Mauritians to circulate during the second lockdown. New features launched in 2021 included the digital vaccination pass, QR scanning and red zone information. beSafeMoris has been a tremendous success with over 750,000 users (web & mobile).

MT also developed a press conference management software to allow the authorities to communicate with the public at large more efficient.

During the second national confinement, we again offered free viewing of more than 100 my.t TV channels, doubled the volume allowance of our broadband packages, and suspended penalties for late payment and disconnection for non-payment.

Our business partners also matter to us. Many of our retailers were adversely affected by the pandemic. To help them during this difficul period, we launched several schemes for our e-vouchers and starter packs. We also rewarded the best performers with a lucky draw, which had a star prize of Rs 1 million.

A new league of connectivity

Our customers’ usage and behaviour have changed rapidly over the years. This trend has only been accelerated by the pandemic, with even more people connected, more users at home, more devices and more people working and studying from home and keeping connected virtually with their families. Connectivity had become truly indispensable.

With the way our lives have been impacted, we knew that if we didn’t want to hold back our people, businesses and our country, just access to internet would not be sufficient Excellent Access in terms of speed, capacity and resilience had to be the norm.

A few years ago, we started a revolution by rolling out fib e island-wide, thus placing Mauritius as the 8th most fibe ed country in the world. We thus laid a solid foundation in terms of our infrastructure for the next digital evolution.

2021 was a defining year in that evolution: we propelled Mauritius into the gigabit era and revolutionised connectivity on mobile and through fib e. In July, we became the fir t telco operator in Mauritius to launch 5G with the my.t 5G Experience Zones in the Ebene Cybercity, Bagatelle Mall, University of Mauritius and La City Trianon. This effectively took mobile data connectivity to the next level, with superfast data connectivity, speeds of up to 1 Gbps and lower latency opening a plethora of possibilities.

Yet another milestone came with the launch of the fir t ever 1 Gbps fib e internet offer in Mauritius in September 2021. To give a wider choice to our customers, MT reviewed its portfolio of residential offers to make available a new range of connectivity solutions, launching a new 500 Mbps package and making a significant price reduction on the 100 Mbps and 50 Mbps packages. We also reviewed our TV offerings and packs to make quality TV more affordable.

Innovating for the people

Mauritius Telecom strives to go beyond helping its own customers to supporting everyone in the country. Four years back we developed the Citizen Support Unit website. We went further in 2021 by launching the CSU mobile app, which enables users to register their complaints, suggestions or queries with more than 300 government entities and gives access to a variety of other features.

Specifically for our own customers and to keep them safe, MT launched Alias, a my.t mobile service, that allows prepay customers to keep their mobile numbers private when recharging through an e-voucher at any retail outlet or in a Telecom shop.

Payment using digital means became a must during the public health crisis. To keep students safe, we worked with the University of Mauritius and the Open University of Mauritius to ease the payment process for administrative fees through my.t money and my.t billpay. We later extended this facility to the students of Polytechnics Mauritius.

Our groundbreaking partnership with Showmax, a leading streaming provider in Africa, was a source of utter delight for my.t customers and football fans. We thus brought live UEFA Champions League and other major football league matches (Premier League, La Liga, Europa Conference League, Europa League etc.) to Mauritius.

International recognition

Our various initiatives have been recognised internationally and we can justifiably take pride in having been nominated three times for the 2021 AfricaCom Awards ceremony. AfricaCom Awards celebrate outstanding contributions for connectivity, digital inclusion and development in Africa.

Even better, we won two awards which we dedicate to our country: the Connectivity Project of the year Award for our Life Extraordinary initiative i.e. the launch of the 1 Gbps fib e internet offer in September 2021 and the deployment of the fir t my.t 5G Experience Zones. Our second award was the Most Innovative Product or Service Award for the my.t 360° Digital Operation project.

In 2021, we were also recognised for our internal initiatives: Mauritius Telecom was conferred the officia Great Place to Work certific tion. We are thrilled with this achievement as it places us amongst the elite companies who are considered as best-in class employers

Looking forward

The forthcoming year will certainly be very challenging as the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak lingers on and now the war in Ukraine further affects the global economy with disrupted supply chains and prices soaring.

Nonetheless, I am fully convinced that Mauritius Telecom will be able to withstand fresh challenges. We have already shown our resilience and we are fully prepared to meet whatever new ones may come our way.

We will continue to focus on building greater efficie y across the MT Group and on consolidating our market position in key sectors such as content and the enterprise market. Last but not least we will pursue our diversific tion strategy into fin ech and managed cloud services.

In all this, the unwavering support and guidance of our Chairman and Board of Directors have been invaluable. As ever, I am also indebted to our MT Group family for their passion, dedication, and faith in our vision. They are the real strength of Mauritius Telecom.

We are also very grateful to our customers, who have remained loyal and who are the core reason we exist.

With such support from all our stakeholders, despite a lack of visibility as to what the future may hold, we are confident that Mauritius Telecom now has a solid foundation and is ready to surf any wave that may come our way.