Mobilising Malawi’s revenue base: Inside MRA’s push to strengthen tax governance

Malawi’s long‑running struggle to raise sufficient domestic revenue has placed renewed attention on the institutions responsible for collecting it. This week, Malawi Revenue Authority Commissioner General Felix Kingstone Tambulasi met with the GIZ Malawi “PFEM – Tikuze Malawi” team to map out the next phase of a partnership aimed at tightening the country’s tax administration.

Backed by funding from the European Union and the German Embassy in Lilongwe, the collaboration focuses on two of the most politically sensitive areas in public finance: audit capacity and taxpayer communication.

At the centre of this work is the challenge of transfer pricing — the complex web of transactions between related companies operating across borders, and a mechanism frequently used by multinational corporations to shift profits into low‑tax jurisdictions.

For a country like Malawi, where the tax base is narrow and public spending needs are vast, the stakes are high.

Strengthening transfer‑pricing audits is not simply a technical exercise; it is a test of the state’s ability to assert fiscal sovereignty in the face of global corporate structures designed to minimise tax exposure.

The early results are striking.

According to MRA, enhanced audit work has already yielded over MK44 billion in additional tax assessments in the 2025/26 fiscal year — a figure that underscores both the scale of previous revenue leakage and the potential of targeted institutional reform.

The partnership’s broader ambition is to shift Malawi away from dependence on external financing and towards a model in which domestic resources play a more central role in funding development.

Whether this momentum can be sustained will depend on political will, administrative capacity and the ability to maintain public trust in the tax system.

But for now, the message is clear: collecting what is due is no longer a slogan — it is becoming a measurable reality.