Mauritius prime minister says he has taken up finance minister post too

The prime minister of Mauritius, Navin Ramgoolam, who was sworn in this month after a landslide election victory, said on Friday he will keep the post of finance minister for himself to help keep the economy under close watch.

"We are doing an audit of the economy to see to what extent the outgoing government has destroyed it," Ramgoolam told reporters in the capital Port Louis after he presided over the swearing in of other ministers.

The veteran politician returned to the prime minister's office a decade after he last left power, following the landslide that gave his Alliance du Changement (ADC) coalition 60 of the 62 national assembly seats.

Ramgoolam, 77, said earlier this week he planned to audit public finances.

He previously served as prime minister from 1995-2000 and 2005-2014.

In 2006, Ramgoolam launched a programme to cut bureaucracy and simplify taxes in order to diversify the $10 billion economy from tourism, textiles and sugar exports.

Since then the country of about 1.3 million people, which markets itself as a link between Africa and Asia, has grown as an offshore financial centre and been consistently ranked the easiest place to do business in Africa by the World Bank.