Malawi govt. advised to emulate other countries’ policies for its economic growth

The economic commentators in Malawi are asking government authorities to take a leaf from policies of the world’s newly emerging economies like China, Greece and Singapore if they really want to rid the country of economic dire straits it is currently sailing through.

Malawi is currently sailing through a labyrinth of economic problems forcing price of goods on the market skyrocketing each day.

Critics say this stems from poor economic policies by both current and previous administration mainly because of the country’s over-dependence on donor aid.

Malawi’s 40 percent of its national budget comes from donors.

But Managing Director of Business Consult Africa Henry Kachaje says Malawi would reverse the trend only if it put in place long-term economic recovery plans as some countries had done.

“Malawi should be planning for at least thirty years from now to see what kind of Malawi we want to see. We should learn from countries like Singapore and China or even Greece. These countries set plans that are no less than twenty years. So Malawi should emulate that,” he says.

He however said there are some problems which Malawi need to address with a sense of urgency like power outages and fuel shortage.

Kachaje said although the country’s economic problems are believed to have been started with the late Bingu wa Mutharika’s administration there were some economic policies which Mutharika was doing them right.

“We had two things we were doing correctly on the ground. There was certainly some serious fiscal management that the Bingu government put in place. There was a lot of control and government spending was controlled and government borrowing especially in the domestic market was also controlled and that helped to get the economy up and running,” he says.

Kachaje has advised government authorities not to be pretending that everything is right but rather tell the people the truth and tell them that the current economic challenges cannot be solved overnight.

“Government must have the welfare of people at heart and know that we just need to tell the people truth so that everyone understands the gravity of the situation.”

He has therefore asked the government to swallow its pride and engage private sector and the academia in its effort to bring the economy back on track.

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