Tiko group: under which state protection to run?

According to an agreement signed in Maputo, part of Transition’s government’s mission will be the protection goods belonging to the outgoing president Marc Ravalomanana. The HAT already took the Mana mill under its protection, by overtaking the Tiko Group’s society management. This Group had turned down an agreement with the government of transition according to which it would generate cash to feed the state. 

The Mana corporation will be again under the Tiko group’s control. The mill in Toamasina had been bluntly requisitioned, closed then reopened by the authorities of the transition. The flour shortage on the local market had been supposed to justify this seizure that looks like a disguised nationalization. 

A state-controlled commission has been put in place in order to control the production and the finances of the enterprise. The factory has been able to run thanks to an available wheat stock. The lack of transparency in the HAT’s management of Mana has been pointed at by Tiko’s lawyers in their questioning of the procedure’s legality. 

The Tia corporation’s factory in Andranomanelatra is going to reopen its doors s well. The Tiko group is going to resume producing yoghurt and bottling mineral water. The end of Tiko’s monopoly on the industrial production of yoghurt made that this rather casual product completely wither from shop markets’ shelves. 

The destruction of the Tiko group’s societies’s infrastructures had been motivated by a political will to put an end to this monopoly and to lower the prices of daily products. The opposite effect occurred:  imported yoghurts, food oil, butter, flour… became more expensive than before the crisis. 

Tiko’s lawyers are contesting the HAT seizure of the Group’s factories and goods as compensation for the enjoyed tax advantages. They emphasize, proof in hand, that the state owed debt only amounts to 25 billions of ariary. The defenders of the agribusiness giant estimate that the requisitions made by the HAT had largely overtaken the due amount. 

Tiko has been feeding the Transition’s government which requisitioned a 35 000 tons stock of rice. Hard sold at low prices, these commodities served the propaganda in the regions. The HAT estimated that Tiko was owing about 190 billions of ariary overall. The group’s lawyers are considering the monumental figure as thoroughly absurd.