Keynote Address delivered at the UK-Malawi Investment Forum on 22nd January 2020
Out of Africa, Invest Africa has identified Malawi as one of the most important investment destinations. I want to thank you for this recognition.
I also want to thank all friends of Malawi who have sponsored this event. It is important that we must create space to showcase the investment opportunities available in Malawi.
Malawi has a lot of resources and opportunities. Malawi is not a poor country. It is only the people of Malawi who are poor.
As a matter of fact, poverty is an investment opportunity. Let me tell you a story that reminds us that poverty is an investment opportunity.
Two men went to an island to find out if they could open a new factory for making shoes. They went sent by one master but to bring home independent reports.
When they came to the island, they found that nobody was wearing shoes. In fact, the people of the island had never heard of anything called shoes.
The two men came back to their boss with two different reports, two different perspectives. The first man said it would be a waste of time and money to build a shoe factory on the island because the people were poor, barefoot and did not even know what shoes are.
The second man said he had found a great shoe market because nobody was wearing shoes. The master listened to the second man and opened up a very successful shoe business on the island.
Malawi is a country where you can come to create wealth. This story also reminds us that money is there to be created. The challenge is that most people do not know the art of creating wealth.
My job in leading this Government is to create conditions that enable the private sector to grow and create new wealth. Our policy is to create a bigger private sector and remain with a smaller public sector.
This is our starting point. In short, we want a bigger private sector and a smaller but efficient public sector. We have taken belligerent measures to create growth of the private sector by doing a number of things.
a) We have been improving the economy in order to create an environment where investments can grow. Nobody wants to invest in a collapsing economy.
b) We officially launched a foreign direct investment program to encourage investors like you to come to Malawi and take up various investment opportunities abound in Malawi.
c) We have carried out public sector reforms, including reviewing our legal framework, in order to improve the environment of doing business. As a result, Malawi has been rising on the World Bank Index of Doing-Business for the last five years.
d) We started an aggressive infrastructure program because investment and trade require a good transport network. For example, we have built more roads than ever in the past five years. We are also expanding and diversifying energy generation as part of the infrastructure for investment. Our goal is to reduce the cost of production.
e) We have commenced projects that are intended to upgrade local Malawians into productive actors in the private sector in order to complement foreign investors. For example, we have launched an Agricultural Commercialization Project because agriculture is so far the backbone of our economy.
f) Last, we are ensuring that Malawi must have a very productive skilled labour market to support investors. We are constructing community technical colleges to empower the Youth with skills across the country. I believe no society can develop without a skilled labour force.
Any investor who comes to Malawi will find a very well skilled labour market.
Let me return to the question of the economy for a while. Malawi is growing both at the macro-economic and micro-economic levels. As I speak, Malawi has a very good macro-economic environment which every investor need.
Our inflation has been in the single digit with a stable local currency for the last four years. Inflation was at the average of 8.8 percent throughout 2019.
At the same time, we have reduced our interest rate down to 13 percent. By the way, interest rate was 47 percent when I took government in 2014.
Now we have comfortable reserves of forex that has gone up from 2 months to 6 months of import cover lately— the highest in the history of our country.
In the past three years, we have registered impressive average growth of 4.7 percent. In 2019, our GDP grew by 5 percent. This is one of the best economic growth records in the world.
Some economic commentators have actually forecast Malawi as the next economic boom in our part of Africa. And I am certain you want to be part of this economic growth.
But as we know, people are the reason why governments exist. We want Malawians to experience economic growth in their individual lives.
So far, we have made the right policy decisions and taken the right actions. Many positive-minded Malawians are busy pursuing the opportunities we have created and changing their lives.
If you come to Malawi today, you will find young men and women selling cars like bananas along the roads in every town. More Malawians can now afford a car more than ever.
In rural communities and remote villages, young Malawians are buying motorcycles everywhere.
As a result, you will find mushrooming filling stations everywhere because we are consuming more fuel than ever.
These are visible signs of a changing economy transforming the lives lives of our people.
Like in any society, it takes real hard work to create one’s fortunes. Good money is never easy to make anywhere.
Whatever challenges we face, Malawi remains an economic rising promise. I invite you to be part of our growing economy. Be part of the story. I thank you for your attention.
