5records
Everything here was gathered for these categories:
Rules written for a category we have not read may bind you and are not in this brief. This is a first pass, not a complete map of the market. Absence of a record here is not evidence that nothing applies. Nothing in this brief carries a named expert's judgement yet, so every reading is a document or a measurement, never somebody's experience of selling here.
Survivable, but you pay for it in margin, rework or returns.
Madagascar proposes that a new technical regulation take effect a median of 105 days — about 4 months — after it is filed with the WTO, across 33 filings carrying both dates, 2010–2025. A proposed date is not a guarantee: drafts are amended, delayed and withdrawn.
It is the planning horizon a brand actually gets between a rule appearing and having to comply with it.
Not fatal. Enough to make a launch feel harder than it should.
Prices in Madagascar are quoted in whole MGA: the currency carries no decimal places in circulation, so a 9.99 price point does not exist and the psychological break has to move up to a whole unit.
A price architecture built on two decimal places does not survive the move to a currency without them.
Madagascar has 3 nationally official languages: Malagasy at 90%, French at 27%, English at 18%. A single-language pack leaves part of the market unaddressed.
Which language leads on the pack decides how much of the market can read what it is buying.
Madagascar gives a median of 60 days to comment on a draft technical regulation, measured across 43 filings at the WTO carrying a comment deadline, 2010–2025.
The window is the only point at which a foreign brand can put anything on the record before the rule is fixed.
When Madagascar files a rule touching food & snacks, the objective it states most often is human health and safety: 74% of 39 filings that state any objective. Next is animal and plant health at 41%. The objective is the filer’s own, from the WTO’s fixed vocabulary; a filing can state several.
Safety objectives are answered with test data and, if the tests fail, with reformulation.
Free to quote, cite and act on; not to resell. Licence and source terms. Cite as: The Orbt Market Index 0.1.0, Orbt, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22679129, retrieved September 9, 2026. If a record here is wrong, its falsifier tells you exactly what to send to hello@tryorbt.com.