JB eyeing taking Malawi into top 100 of World Bank doing business ranking
President Joyce Banda has expressed interest of taking Malawi into top 100 of all World Bank doing business ranking.
Speaking at the two day 6th African Investment Conference in South Africa on Monday, Banda said it is her wish to see Malawi ranked within the top most 100 countries that are doing business with World Bank in two years.
To achieve this dream President Banda said her administration is doing everything possible to deal with all political and economic governance challenges in order to stabilise the economy.
One of the measures is to cut on waste and promote prudent fiscal management one of which is the reduction of president salary with 30 percent.
“When I assumed leadership of the country my government established Economic Recovery Program in order to create sustainable and progressive monetary and fiscal policies to stabilise the economy,” she said.
In order to address medium and long term policy road map, Banda said the government has developed a diversified and productive economic model to reinstate traditional drivers of growth and generate foreign exchange.
“Through National Dialogue on Economy my government has decided to promote a private sector led economic growth through identification of key priority areas.
“Some of the key areas which government has identified are of agriculture, tourism, mining, energy and infrastructure development,” said Banda.
She therefore called on more 200 business captains who gathered at the first ever joint Nedbank- Ecobank conference to come to Malawi and invest in some of aforementioned key areas.
Banda posed an invitation, “I would like to invite fund managers, financial institutions and private corporations here present to seriously consider partnering with us by seizing all these investment opportunities.”
On private partnership, the Malawian leader said her government has enacted a Public Private Partnership Act which merged two institutions of Malawi Investment Promotion Agency and Malawi Export Promotion Council into Malawi Investment and Trade Centre (MITC) for ease the eligible companies’ registration process.
She said under this approach Malawi intends to minimise the procedures and create incentives by guaranteeing the issuing of business licence to qualified business within 21 days.
“We want to create a growing and expanding market by entering into bilateral trade agreements with various countries including South Africa,” she said.
Besides this, Malawian leader said Malawi has successful reinstate a US$ 350 million investment of the Millennium Challenge Compact (MCC) with United States of America in order to address energy challenges that impinge productivity in investment.
On this point Banda emphasised, “My government is committed to turn Malawi from being an aid dependent to being a trade investment dependent nation.”
African Investment conference an annual event organised by some of the leading banks in South Africa where one influential and leading heading of state or person appointed to deliver a key note speech to African business tycoons.
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