Deficiencies and locking mechanisms

You do not need to keep track of
the money held in private individuals’ pockets, in their safes, inside their mattresses, or in their bank accounts to know that many of them, many families, and many informal associations have a significant net worth.
Huge single family homes, apartment buildings, and other
structures dot the capital city’s districts, in direct contrast with the poverty stricken lot of most Malagasy citizens.
Lately, the traffic jams, which have progressively retaken the capital city over, allow us to rediscover the countless four-wheel drive vehicles which, if truth be told, are just another type of savings account or investment.

For many economists and financiers, the key is to rechannel, and redirect these investments so that they are productive.
Nonetheless, the private individual does not really have a choice, outside the deals offered by French banks, which, for many, are anything but attractive.
Given that the State Treasury proposes annual interest rates of some 11%, it does not take a brain surgeon to see how ridiculous the usual 5 to 6% bank offers are, even with additional incentives.
But who can afford to bid on the State Treasury bond offers which can cost as much as many millions or billions of Malagasy Francs?
Everyone knows that the primary banks owe their lending power to the deposits made by private individuals.
And let us not forget the millions of Malagasy Francs gambled weekly on horses, and into the cash registers of foreign private establishments.
In any event, some financiers, and some economists reveal that there are a few families, a few financial associations, and a few privileged individuals who are making a killing on the banking and financial system currently in force, and they have no desire to democratize it, for fear they may have to share the wealth.

In fact, one cannot turn a blind eye to the monopoly exercised by a few business and public enterprise associations, especially when the financing comes from the French Agency for Development, or even the European Union.
Given the required banking collateral guarantees, and all the support, and planning networks at their disposal, these business associations monopolize the bulk of the entire French public development assistance budget.
From this vantage point, French taxpayer contributions which are supposed to go to the development of populations in needy countries, instead are used to make work for, and enrich a chosen few.
Even worse, the contributions only benefit a group of individuals, found haphazardly, around schools, in nightclubs, in gambling joints, and in French private banks.
Within some circles, Madagascar’s Credit Lyonnais is rumored to be the top performing Credit Lyonnais in all of Africa, and for a good reason!
The situation is the same within BOA.
“They have a virtual lock on everything” cry out financiers of other nationalities who would like to see nothing more than the enrichment of other financial institutions, especially the American ones.
In their view, when this happens the imbalance would be less noticeable, and thus, would be less frustrating.

Translated by J. F. Razanamiadana