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Sitting in the dining room of his restaurant in the Isoraka district, in the center of Antananarivo, Dominique (an assumed first name) scans the dreary and deserted street. In another life, this corner was one of the most frequented in the city by residents but also by tourists. “The landscape has changed, many places have closed within a yearsighs the restaurateur who also owns a bar and a hotel in the Malagasy capital and normally employs around fifty people. We survived because we had cash, but that’s far from being the case for everyone. I have friends who found themselves with nothing, overnight. » For this French present on the Big Island for around twenty years, the biggest cost remains the rent to be paid, to more or less understanding owners.
Since the arrival of the coronavirus almost a year and a half ago, the tourism sector has been hit hard by the economic crisis. Vacationers have deserted Madagascar, whose borders have remained closed almost continuously since March 19, 2020. And, while the Delta variant is now present in several neighboring islands, such as Reunion and the Seychelles, the council of ministers has decided, on July 6, to further postpone their reopening for an indefinite period.
A new blow for the tourism industry. Excluding the health crisis, this represents around 7% of GDP, according to 2019 figures from the Federation of Hoteliers and Restaurateurs of Madagascar (FHORM), generates 44,000 direct jobs and supports around 1.5 million people if we considers the entire value chain. All the small hands in the sector have therefore also been impacted.
“Two years of getting by”
“It was two years of getting by”says Tahina, a self-employed driver guide established in the countryside, on the edge of the city. “I started by reselling hydroalcoholic gel on a Facebook page at the start of confinement. It worked like a blast! he smiled. Afterwards, I added masks made in China, like the street vendors. But the page was closed. There, I build a chicken coop to sell eggs. »
For the past year and a half, Tahina has been living on the money he saved over the past decade. But his reserves are dwindling. “I was planning to buy a new 4X4 to be able to do more circuits. I had to change planshe admits, shrugging his shoulders. But I’m not complaining. I know colleagues who have worked their whole lives earning only 30,000 to 40,000 ariarys (between 6.7 and 8.9 euros) per day thanks to tourists. They couldn’t save, and overnight they found themselves with nothing. » Tahina tries to hire them when he does one-off tours for the Malagasy people.
Since the start of the pandemic, the State has not paid any aid to the tourism sector, although it is devastated. “Every time we announce a curfew, regional closures, the problem grows… 90% of workers are technically unemployed » out of the 44,000 formal jobs, details Johann Pless, president of the FHORM, who estimates the losses across the entire sector in sixteen months at almost a billion euros. “The State has agreed to a deferral of taxes, and hoteliers are being asked to go into debt to pay the charges without income, it is the snake biting its tail. We absolutely need sectoral aid to be able to raise our heads”he pleads.
Reopening
For the island economy, in particular tourism, the reopening of borders is the condition sine qua non of a recovery. However, for a year and a half, no date has been set. The government is extending the closure from fortnight to fortnight, preventing entrepreneurs from planning ahead. Sunday July 11, the Prime Minister, Christian Ntsay, assured that the government would examine “means to support tourism”without giving further details.
According to a source in the sector, regular meetings are organized between the Minister of Transport, Tourism and Meteorology and the operators, but the latter are struggling to obtain answers from the authorities, both in terms of timetable and control measures. ‘accompaniement.
“If no aid is granted by the end of the year, when the borders reopen, only 30% of the national industrial fabric of tourism and the hotel and catering industry will remain.predicted Johann Pless. It will be the end of VSEs and SMEs. »
