President Chakwera calls on World Bank to help his govt actualize ATM strategy
President Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera has appealed to the World Bank to assist his government in its pursuit for the actualisation of the Agriculture, Tourism and Mining (ATM) strategy.
Chakwera said his government devised ATM strategy as a tool to revamp the economy.
The Malawi leader made the sentiments at the IDA heads of State and Government summit in Nairobi Kenya.
He said over the past four years, Malawi has been going through the hardest times.
“My ambition is to access even more substantial facilities in the IDA and other instruments the Bank has tailor-made for us so that we can invest in the implementation of our ATM strategy, ” he said.
Chakwera said World Bank has been a good national development partner in the darkest period Malawi has been going through.
The president said within the 60 months period he has been in power, his Government has been pounded with colonies of calamity attack but IDA has always played a front line role.
He said like a patient suffering from serious and multiple attacks against multiple organs in quick succession, in the less than 60 months in office, he has suffered the devastation of the Covid – 19 pandemic and all kinds of natural disasters.
The president gave a recent example on how the Bank has quickly responded to his appeal for 446.5 million dollars in international support for the 9 million Malawians in need of food assistance in the face of El Niño, saying the bank has released 57.62 million dollars to support the country’s disaster response, while a further 7 million dollars is coming through the Sovereign Drought Insurance Policy with the Africa Risk Capacity (ARC).
