Stop ‘cashgating’ public resources for Malawi economy to grow, says Finance Minister

Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development, Goodall Gondwe says people in the country need to safeguard public resources if the economy is to grow.


Minister of Finance Gondwe speaks after the Third High level Forum on Development Effectiveness 

Speaking in Lilongwe at the Bingu International Convention Centre (BICC) on Wednesday, Gondwe said it is high time people in the country started generating integrity and respect for public resources by making sure that they are not defrauded.

He made the remarks during the third High Level Forum on Development Effectiveness (HLF3), the highest multi-stakeholder policy dialogue structure on effective development cooperation.

Held under the theme ’Towards an Inclusive and Accelerated Implementation of the Third Malawi Growth and Development Strategy’, Goodall said the country is at the verge where it should vigorously launch itself on a path for growth noting this could only be achieved if resources were not misused.

“This relates everywhere in the economy and in fact, we need to have a conference on integrity that will enable us reduce misuse of resources either by defrauding, corruption or carelessness use of it and that this will help the country’s economy to gain its strength,” he said.

Among other things, the meeting was meant to draw consensus, provide guidance and accelerate action on the National Development Agenda-Implementation of the Third Malawi Grow and Development Strategy (MGDS III).

“What we are doing today is to sit down with key people, traditional chiefs represented by two paramount chiefs, ministers and the captains of the industry to discuss how we will position ourselves to get to the strategies to be implemented,” he said.

Goodall said the meeting was fruitful as it has happened at the time when they will be launching the MGDS III where growth objectives for the next five years are to be drawn.

According to him, both MGDS 1 and MGDS II had priorities that faced a lot of challenges in implementing relating to failure of crops and hunger.

He said as such the country even failed to achieve vision 2020 because the country could not generate its own resources.

“If you look at what we expected to achieve in vision 2020, one of the more important ones was to be a middle income country which means that our GDP by now would have been above $1000 per year or even more than that. We were going to transform our country into an industrialized country and reduce poverty by a big factor but we haven’t done that because resources were misused,” said Goodall.

He said they had suggestions from the stakeholders present that the country should discreet irrigation projects where solar energy will lift underground water to irrigate areas around, hoping that this will help the country to do well.

Goodall said with the commitment of everyone, the most important thing that has to be done first is that the country should change its agricultural practice.

“Instead of being a country that relies on one produce a year, we should start producing twice a year and that this will increase our productivity. It will be important to have more agricultural projects.

“The country has got to rely on its own resources first. It will have to mobilize more resources to finance the requirements of the national strategy. Developing partners will just supplement us. If we fail to mobilize resources that are needed internally, I hope developing partners will see it worthwhile to increase their support but it should start with us,” he said.

The minister said that when the national Planning Commission takes position, it will evaluate the amount of money needed to be pumped in for implementation of the strategy saying he hoped that it will be about 500 billion per year and his expectations were that the country will need to cough about MK2.5 trillion.

Follow and Subscribe Nyasa TV :

Sharing is caring!

Follow us in Twitter
3 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
zamuxolo ngalo
6 years ago

nkhalamba

CIVIL SERVANT
CIVIL SERVANT
6 years ago

Mwanapiye amaonera amake kunyera m’nyumba. As long as politicians in any ruling party continue abusing their positions and make dishonest gains most civil servants will follow suit.

Think-tank
Think-tank
6 years ago

Nonsense……fake concern ….

Read previous post:
Malawi Police arrest landlord after tenant dies of electric shock

Police in Soche have arrested a man after electrical power extension which is allegedly that he did illegally at his...

Close