An economic growth rate of -5% in 2009

According to the members of the Reflection Circle on Madagascar’s economy, an academic association, the Great Isle’s economic growth rate in 2009, in the year tarnished by the political putsch, was minus 5%. The figure is anyway still a cause for pride for the putsch originated regime’s supporters, since the year 1991 growth rate was minus 6% due to a general strike, minus 11% in 2002, consecutively to a post election political crisis. 

In 2009, the economic growth has been partly “sustained” by the plus 5% agriculture growth, and by the plus 8% information technology growth. The industry was the crisis’ biggest victim. Its survival is largely owed to the investments of Sherritt and QMM, a couple of worldwide companies respectively exploiting nickel and cobalt (Center East) and ilmenite (Southeast). 

The year 2009 political crisis has been the cause for significant job losses in development projects financed by foreign foundings. THose projects used to grant respectable positions to young Malagasy graduates, with wages largely superior to those offered by private companies in general. 

Large scale construction sites supportive of some communal economies during the latest years have also vanished in 2009. 

And yet, unemployment is still taking its toll from the society. The suspension of the AGOA led to a brutal wave of layoffs in corporations making their living from exports to the United States. The situation is a harsh reality now.