Rice flows across regions in Madagascar

Tsilavo Ralandison, Yutaka Arimoto, Hisaki Kono, Takeshi Sakurai & Kazushi Takahashi

Abstract
This paper examines rice trade flows within and across regions in Madagascar, based on data of unique rice sales collected in 22 major markets in Madagascar in 2012 and 2013. We find that intraregional trade accounts for a large fraction of the overall rice trade. We then focus on factors that may affect inter-regional transactions, such as market status (i.e. deficit or surplus), geographical proximity and seasonality (harvest vs. non-harvest and rainy vs. dry). We find that rice flows mainly from surplus to deficit regions and within regions that are geographically proximate. Seasonal factors have a generally negligible impact on rice flow.