Madagascar Import Data: $4.82B in 2023, Down 14.18%

Fuel and Food Dominate Madagascar's Import Bill

Madagascar imported $4.82 billion worth of goods in 2023, down 14.18% from $5.61 billion in 2022. Mineral fuels topped every import category at 20.67% of the total, worth $995.40 million. Madagascar produces no crude oil of its own, so it depends entirely on imported fuel. Much of that fuel arrives as refined product shipped in from Gulf exporters like Oman, whose position along the Indian Ocean trade routes makes it a natural regional supplier for island economies like Madagascar. That geography matters more than it might for a country with easier access to alternative suppliers, since shipping refined fuel across longer distances adds cost that a smaller, poorer economy can ill afford to absorb. Machinery contributed 8.27% ($398.13 million), and electrical machinery added 5.63% ($271.39 million). Cereals, largely rice, ranked fourth at 5.54% ($266.94 million). Madagascar's rice imports surged from 262,002 tonnes in 2024 to more than 800,000 tonnes in 2025, driven partly by cheap imports undercutting local production prices and by drought and cyclones periodically disrupting domestic harvests, despite rice being the country's own staple crop. In response, Madagascar's government raised tariffs on imported rice to 20% and launched a WTO safeguard investigation aimed at protecting domestic growers from what officials view as unfair price competition from abroad.

Vehicles added 4.76% ($229.15 million), and animal, vegetable and microbial fats and oils contributed 4.13% ($198.96 million). Pharmaceutical products supplied 3.58% ($172.64 million), and salt, sulphur and stone added 3.25% ($156.61 million). Plastics contributed 2.98% ($143.53 million), and iron or steel articles closed out the top ten at 2.93% ($141.09 million). Aside from fuel and rice, this list reads as the ordinary industrial and consumer basket of a developing island economy still building out its own manufacturing base, importing capital goods and finished products rather than producing most of them domestically. That pattern is typical of low-income economies at an early stage of industrialization, where building local manufacturing capacity for machinery, vehicles and pharmaceuticals takes far longer than simply buying finished goods from abroad.

China Leads Suppliers, With Oman a Distant but Notable Second

China supplied 16.99% of Madagascar's imports in 2023, worth $818.47 million, more than any other source. Oman ranked second at 13.47% ($648.80 million), almost entirely fuel shipments that explain much of the mineral fuels category's scale. France took third at 11.23% ($540.70 million), continuing the colonial-era trade relationship visible on Madagascar's export side as well. Together, these top three sources made up 41.69% of total import value, a moderate concentration split between an Asian manufacturing hub, a Gulf energy exporter and a longstanding European trade partner.

India supplied 8.73% ($420.68 million), much of it rice and other food staples. South Africa contributed 5.55% ($267.23 million), and United Arab Emirates added 5.01% ($241.11 million), another Gulf energy and trading hub. Belgium supplied 3.96% ($190.63 million), and Mauritius contributed 3.91% ($188.38 million), reflecting its role as a regional trade and logistics hub for the southwestern Indian Ocean. Malaysia added 3.05% ($146.97 million), and Egypt closed out the top ten at 2.43% ($117.22 million).

Imports Have Pulled Back From a 2022 Peak

Madagascar's import total has followed roughly the same volatile path as its exports over the past five years. It stood at $3.94 billion in 2019, fell to $3.22 billion in 2020 as the pandemic disrupted global trade, then recovered to $4.41 billion in 2021 and jumped further to $5.61 billion in 2022, the high point of the five-year window. It fell to $4.82 billion in 2023, down 14.18% from that peak.

The 2022 spike lines up with the same global energy and food price surge that hit import bills across the developing world that year, before prices eased back through 2023. Madagascar's own export earnings from nickel and vanilla move on a similar but not identical cycle. That mismatch means the gap between what the country earns abroad and what it needs to buy for fuel and food can widen or narrow considerably from one year to the next, depending on which set of commodity prices happens to move faster. A country this reliant on imported fuel and a rice-growing sector still working toward self-sufficiency will likely keep seeing its import bill track global commodity prices closely for years to come. That pattern will likely persist until domestic rice production and any future energy investments meaningfully narrow the country's current dependence on foreign suppliers for both.