Welcome to Malawi. And indeed, welcome to Sanjika Palace.
I am aware that you have met my Government officials and that you have had fruitful discussions.
I believe we are working towards preparing a Country Partnership Agreement with World Bank. This agreement will capture our consolidated plans, mutually inspired to spur a new wave of development in Malawi.
Indeed, you have come at the right time when we are renewing our economic priorities.
We treasure the partnership between Malawi and the World Bank. And we appreciate the support that the World Bank has been giving us.
Together, we have made a united front against poverty. And we should remain united in fighting poverty and improve lives of the people.
Our mission is to get Malawians out of poverty. But the mission of getting Malawians out of poverty has been a challenging journey over the years. Every time we move two steps forward, something comes around to take us three steps backwards.
We made a lot of gains in the past five years. But some people who are refusing to accept results of the general elections have gone on a campaign of violence, frustrating businesses and slowing down the economy.
This is happening despite the local and international observer missions commending the election as free, fair and credible.
I believe in the rule of law and peace. Therefore, you might have seen this unprecedented restraint on our part.
Whatever the case, we are set to transform Malawi. We will surmount every challenge to develop and transform this country. And we have proven that we can make great strides out of a crisis.
In 2014, we started with an economic crisis. The first five years thus focused on macro-economic stability.
Our goal now is to focus on growth.
We have taken Malawi out of an economic crisis, achieved macro-economic stability and inspired economic growth without donor budgetary support. We like taking Malawi to economic autonomy.However, we would have achieved far much more by now if we had direct budgetary support.
Imagine if we had direct budgetary support! And the world has no single excuse for not giving Malawi budgetary support.
Whatever our circumstances, we pledge to transform Malawi.
Our vision remains to turning Malawi from being an importin and consuming nation to become a producing and exporting country.
The Malawi Growth and Development Strategy spells out how we intend to achieve the vision.
Our strategy is to focus on priority areas that include:
Agriculture and agro-processing. We want to empower our farmers; increase productivity and transform manufacturing.
Education and skills development
Energy, industry, mining and tourism development
Transport and ICT infrastructure; and
Health and population
Within agriculture, we are focusing on irrigation, agriculture commercialization and agro-processing using rural industrialization strategy.
We want to produce more goods and create more jobs in rural industrialization. And we want to develop industrial parks as part of this strategy.
Rural industrialization is also one strategy for making Malawi become a producing and exporting country.
Above all, we specifically want to see unprecedented development in manufacturing, mining, tourism and power production.|
Further, we want to see more aggressive reforms in the public financial management sector and improvement of the business environment.
When all is said and done, we want to invest in three priorities across the spectrum:
One – creating jobs!
Two – creating jobs!
Three – creating jobs!
In whatever we do, we want to create jobs for the youth!
With these remarks, I once again welcome you in our journey of taking Malawi from poverty to prosperity.
I thank you for your attention.
