Tulear hosts the island’s first business forum

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From Madagascar, from today to 3 December 2020, the first regional business forum on the island must be held. On this occasion, the locked region of Atsimo-Andrefana, furthest south of the island, was chosen to host the very first edition. Two hundred participants are therefore expected in the city of Tulear, economic actors, project managers, representatives of ministries and local authorities but also donors, banks and investment funds.

as reported from Antananarivo, Sarah Tétaud

The purpose of this large meeting, organized by EDBM, the Board of Economic Development in Madagascar, the Agency for Investment Promotion, is to promote agro-industrial investment projects in this vulnerable region and to create the meeting between companies in the field with potential investors, public or private.

“There is no funding available”

“The needs are there. And there is no shortage of projects, explains Camille André-Bataille, head of Anka Madagascar (“Our Energy” in Madagascar), a company that specializes in access to energy and renewable energy. “The real problem,” she said, “and it’s still the same war wound, it’s financing, it’s money. There is no funding available and Madagascar is not yet very attractive on the international stage in this sector, energy and in particular electrification in rural areas. Madagascar lacks attractiveness because it is an environment, a context, a still immature market. ”

His company won a project to electrify about fifty villages in the Atsimo-Andrefana region with solar-powered mini-distribution networks. A project equivalent to about 3.5 megawatts, a significant solar capacity for the energy sector in Madagascar. If two municipalities (Mangily and Anakao) have just been electrified, the others will be delivered on a case-by-case basis when funding, and in particular subsidies, ie public funds, have been found.

What we observe is that some money goes through the government to finance these projects. There are funding programs from international donors, but which are not yet fully structured for this type of project, for the public funding part, therefore through grants (public funding). And even from a private financing point of view, it is still very much about negotiations and trials with investors, who are often international, to attract them to Madagascar and convince them to invest in these projects but therefore also to take risks. Because these projects are risky projects, where profitability is spread over several years and where we are always exposed to risks such as inflation in the country, exchange rates, socio-economic and political instability. .

“Today there is an overrepresentation of Tana”

In this forum, the road to Anka Madagascar could very well cross the Miarakap, the Malagasy investment fund. Its CEO Emmanuel Cotsoyannis will be present: “We are always looking for investment opportunities. This type of forum allows you to find some. And so we had to be there. And the second, important element is that we have currently made seven investments, and all of them are in Tana. And in fact, we regret it. Today, there is an over-representation of Tana in the private sector seen in Madagascar. We are convinced that there is significant potential outside, and in Tulear we know of some dynamic companies. So these initiatives, which also benefit the decentralization of operations, we can only join and support them at our level. “

Gathering development actors in one place and giving more visibility to what is already being done in one of the priority regions on the island, this is the whole goal of this forum which should be duplicated in other regions by 2021.

Also read: Covid-19 in Madagascar: a creativity fair to help small businesses

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