Overview of BAMEX:

The purpose of BAMEX is to increase market-based, private sector-led growth. The project aims to increase trade and revenues from selected Malagasy products in domestic, regional and international markets.

The objectives of the program are to: (i) strengthen linkages along product chains that have strong market potential; (ii) build local capacity to assess and respond to changing economic conditions affecting investment and trade; and (iii) support the improvement of economic and trade policies that encourage investment and exports. The program will identify and promote creative, informed, and practical market-based approaches to introduce more productive business practices and techniques.

Specific interventions undertaken in this program will be selected based on their ability to address three basic criteria: (i) potential for a significant contribution to economic growth; (ii) contribution to poverty reduction; and (iii) complementarities with rural development activities and biodiversity conservation/natural resource management.

Our simplest measure of success is increased sales by our Malagasy clients, and our aim is to help our clients achieve $25 million of new sales.

Our Vision and Objectives

The overall purpose of BAMEX is to help develop Madagascar’s private sector in a market-led, sustainable, broad-based and environmentally friendly manner that will significantly contribute to economic growth over the next five years. Our vision is not just to provide business development services, organize training sessions, and study policy reforms. It is to generate sales, promote trade, attract investment, create employment, and help the government promulgate and enforce new laws and regulations that will contribute to improve the business environment in Madagascar. More specifically, we proposed a goal of generating at least $25 million in new sales – that is, about 0.5 percent of GDP – over the next five years. Because we are well aware that this goal will require a boost in private investment and exports, we also proposed to generate $5 million in new investment and 50 percent of new sales through international trade.

We intend to cover the whole country, while focusing on USAID priority eco-regions in the Toamasina, Fianarantsoa, and Toliary provinces, and on the government growth poles, especially in Antsirabe and Taolagnaro. Despite limited funding, we also believe that we should not restrict the number of chains because we do not want to pass up business opportunities with good growth potential. A small amount of resources directed towards appropriate market, technical, or management assistance can have a tremendous effect on a value chain and trigger remarkable results. We also want to help Malagasy enterprises become more competitive on domestic and foreign markets, while working closely with other members of USAID Eco-Regional Alliance to protect threatened ecosystems, through an approach that relates product processing and marketing to development and conservation interventions in a regional perspective.

Our vision is rooted in a market-driven, business-specific, bottom-up, multi-level approach that reflects an understanding of the macroeconomic context and knowledge of constraints faced by enterprises:

• market-driven because markets are the starting point and ultimate goal of our interventions. We will work with companies or associations for whom there are buyers and help them increase their sales. Adopting a market-driven approach does not mean producing what you normally produce and figuring out how to connect to the market afterwards. A market-driven approach heeds what the market is demanding in terms of quantity, quality, and timing – from the beginning.
  
• business-specific because we will tailor our interventions to meet the specific needs of each enterprise and value chain. It will also be essential to identify cross-cutting activities that will benefit more than one chain, thus economizing on resources.
  
• bottom-up because our approach starts by looking at problems faced by business clients and demands from actors along the value chains, not from a top-down application of theoretical strategies.

Multi-level because we must intervene not only to assist individual enterprises, but also to help the government adopt, promulgate, and enforce well-defined policy reforms to expand trade, promote investment, and increase the competitiveness of targeted value chains.

 

Expanding the Market Presence and Business Linkages in the Non-Traditional Natural Products Markets

The market development and sales of spices and essential oils for non-traditional markets will be a key component of the BAMEX project. This assignment will focus help to increase sales and more direct market linkages with the development of value-added products that have strong market potential. This assignment will not only develop the markets in the US for these challenging market sectors, but will also help to build local capacity of rural farmers and producers in meeting the technical challenges, technology partnerships, and product presentations that are needed for these highly individual markets. This task is included in the work plan, and it is aimed at creating sales of products that are lower volume than the traditional markets, but generally much higher value, and therefore are important in contributing to the livelihoods of Malagasy clients by meeting the three basic criteria mentioned above.

In order to help in the market expansion and creating business linkages, EthnoPharm, a leading expert in the non-traditional markets, was subcontracted. EthnoPharm will be helping to facilitate business linkages and finding opportunities for value-added spice and essential oil development, among other Malagasy products, throughout the length of the contract. This website was created as a tool to assist in the market linkages and dispersal of information of Malagasy products.