Foreign partners have pledged $6.4 billion to Madagascar for the next four years, the central bank governor said late on Thursday at a donors conference to help rebuild the Indian Ocean island after years of political turmoil. Madagascar's economy has been struggling since a 2009 coup scared off foreign investors and prompted many donors to shut down aid programmes. Donors and multilateral lenders began resuming cooperation after an orderly election at the end of 2013.
The country is one of the world's poorest, despite reserves of nickel, cobalt, gold, uranium and other minerals. "The total amount of commitments to finance the National Development Plan is $6.4 billion," Alain Rasolofondraibe, the central bank governor, said at the conference. The existing National Development Plan runs from 2015 to 2019. Some of the pledges made by donors and financial partners covered the period 2017 to 2020, while others ran from 2017 to 2021, officials said.