Malawi opposition leaders savage govt’s economic record

Malawi’s president and his opposition spent the week disagreeing, more or less, about a single number: the price of maize. Peter Mutharika, marking a year back in office, cited its fall from over K100,000 to around K35,000 a bag as proof his “4Fs” agenda — food, fuel, forex, fertiliser — was working.

Opposition leader Simplex Chithyola Banda didn’t dispute the figure. He just added everything else to the ledger: fuel, fertiliser, transport, university fees, electricity, all up.

His verdict: “Malawians are poorer today than they were a year ago.”

What else came out. Chithyola Banda, a former finance minister, didn’t stop at vibes. He alleged $403,605 linked to the state oil company had vanished overseas via a forged bank letter, said fertiliser deliveries had fallen drastically short of target (46,364 of a promised 102,845 metric tonnes), and raised fresh questions about the K128.7 billion Amaryllis Hotel purchase by the pension fund — a deal already under scrutiny elsewhere.

UTM’s Dalitso Kabambe, a former central bank governor, piled on with debt numbers (K24 trillion inherited, K5 trillion more added in a year) and a claim that Vice-President Jane Ansah has been sidelined — which tracks with other reporting this year.

The one voice without a side. Economics Association president Bertha Bangara Chikadza split the difference: “mixed results” in an economy still battered by inflation, debt and food insecurity, but “signs of improvement” too.

Possibly the only sentence all week that wasn’t trying to win an argument.

The actual story. Not whether maize is cheaper — nobody disputes that. It’s whether one falling price offsets a longer list of rising ones, and whether the specific allegations (the NOCMA payment, the fertiliser shortfall) hold up once someone checks the paperwork.

That’s the bit worth watching, once the statements stop and the receipts start.