An economics graduate and practitioner, Vishnu is Director of Development Cooperation Division of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development of Mauritius.  He has a long track-record spanning 27 years with Mauritian government agencies and is involved in, inter alia, the formulation of development of strategies, programming of ODA, resource mobilisation and economic cooperation.  He works closely with the development community to align their interventions to the economic reform programme Mauritius started implementing 2 years ago.  He has been driving the Mauritian Government agenda on regional cooperation and integration strategy, specifically on trade and economic cooperation matters. He is actively contributing to the regional integration agenda to make the FTAs fully effective, the EPA negotiation and related trade reform required and promoting a better understanding of the opportunities offered by the AID FOR TRADE initiative to expedite such a move.