Enter Madagascar market with a .COM.MG Domain

Yes. Article 2 of the naming charter states that the applicant may be a natural or legal person, that the applicant may reside abroad, and that the administrative contact representing a legal entity need not be located in Madagascar. With those two sentences the charter removes both the residency and the local contact requirement. You register through an accredited registrar; NIC-MG does not accept registrations directly.

No. Article 3 of the charter lists only two items for eligibility: two nameservers with their IP addresses, and complete contact details for the administrative and technical contacts. Although the zone is defined for commercial entities, the charter sets no document-based eligibility test for these definitions. Documents are needed only for the reserved names in article 8.3 — institution, community or geographic names — in the form of authorisation from the body concerned.

There is no rule difference. Article 5 of the charter joins them on a single line: «.com.mg or .co.mg for commercial entities». Registry records also show both zones created on the same day, held by the same operator and published from the same nameservers. The difference only appears in practice: the name you want may be taken in one and free in the other. Query both together; the same rules apply on the co.mg page.

Two characters. Article 8.1 of the charter states that names shorter than two characters are not permitted, and the maximum is 63 characters per label. Permitted characters are the letters a to z, the digits 0 to 9 and the hyphen; a hyphen may not sit at the start or the end, and every other character including the dot is forbidden. The same article adds one more rule: a name may not consist of digits alone.

Yes. Article 9 of the charter sets up a registration as a subscription of at least one year that is renewed tacitly, so you do not need to submit a renewal request. The reverse also holds: to stop the renewal, your termination request must reach NIC-MG no later than the expiry date of the name. If the fee is unpaid one month after expiry, the registry may deactivate the name, and it becomes available again three months later.

Yes. Article 13 of the charter states that a holder may request the transfer of the management of their name from one registrar to another, and that the request is made online by the destination registrar. The article also carries a clear safeguard: the former registrar may not oppose the transfer, except where an outstanding balance or a dispute exists between them and the holder. You can start from the domain transfer page.

No, and the charter says so explicitly. Article 4 states that NIC.MG conducts no prior rights search and makes verifying that the requested name does not infringe someone else's rights, in particular intellectual property and trademark rights, the applicant's obligation; the text suggests consulting Madagascar's industrial property office OMAPI. So if the name looks free the registration will go through, but the legal risk stays with you.

Article 15 of the charter points to one route: where the registration and abusive use of a .mg name infringes a third party's trademark right, the UDRP applies and the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center is the sole dispute resolution body. The name stays active and is locked throughout the procedure, and NIC-MG makes no changes to it. The registrar is obliged to inform the holder of the UDRP principles at registration and at renewal.