Banque de Madagascar

The Comptoir national d'escompte de Paris established a presence on the island in the late 19th century, and had advocated the creation of a local issuance bank as early as 1895.

Parliamentary debates lingered in France for several years, as different models were considered including direct issuance by the French state, or the granting of an issuance privilege to a private-sector bank as had been done elsewhere with the Banque de l'Indochine in 1875 and the Banque de l'Afrique Occidentale in 1901.

[3] Legislation was eventually adopted on 22 December 1925 that created the Banque de Madagascar as a specialized issuance bank that would in practice be operated by the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas (BPPB), with which the French Finance Ministry and the colonial government of Madagascar had respectively signed agreements to that effect on 1 July 1925.

[1] It served as a model for subsequent revisions of the issuance privilege, first of the Bank of West Africa and later of the Banque de l'Indochine.

The bank had to pay a levy to the French government for the issuance monopoly, which in 1927 was nearly 2 million francs.

From May to December 1926, the bank opened seven branches, first in Tananarive (now Antananarivo) and then in Tamatave (now Toamasina), Diégo-Suarez (now Antsiranana), Majunga (now Mahajanga), Nossi-Bé (now Nosy Be), Fianarantsoa, and Mananjary.

[12] When the Comoro Islands became a separate French territory in 1946, the name of the issuing bank was changed to Banque de Madagascar et des Comores.

In 1950, the French government took over majority ownership of the Banque de Madagascar et des Comores.