President Peter Mutharika Wednesday took advantage of the audience he had with executive directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) to ask for the bank’s continued support to Malawi, particularly through the national budget.
Currently, most of Malawi’s development partners prefer to provide their aid through the off-budget approaches, arguing that they are still not satisfied with the progress the country is making in sealing loopholes in the finance management system.
In his address to the AfDB executive directors, Mutharika said budget support is his administration’s preferred mode of aid delivery as it continues implementing the Public Finance and Economic Management Reforms and the Public Service Reforms.
“This is a commitment that the government has made in order to improve efficiency in service delivery for the benefit of the people of Malawi…” he said.
Mutharika also reiterated that AfDB remains one of the most important development partners for Malawi with a history of development cooperation dating to June 1969.
“In Malawi, the bank has been providing support to various sectors and thematic areas, such as health, agriculture, water, irrigation, transport, education, as well as public finance management,” said Mutharika.
He added: “Currently, Malawi is experiencing food security challenges due to the devastating floods and dry spells that hit the country in the last growing season. This state of affairs may be made worse with the drought that has affected most parts of the sub- Saharan Africa…”
Mutharika said it is his government’s intention to break the cycle of food insecurity permanently.
“We believe reliance on rain-fed farming will not help us break this cycle but rather irrigation. I, therefore, invite the bank to partner with us by not only bringing the much needed resources on the table but ideas too,” he said.
In an interview after the meeting with Mutharika, spokesperson of the visiting AfDB executive directors, Samy Zaghloul, said the process of providing direct budgetary support goes through negotiations between the bank and the Ministry of Finance.
“The bank has always been cooperative when it comes to budget support. We have been very flexible. This is something that we will continue discussing with the Minister of Finance on the priorities of the support that the bank will be offering.
“But we also have a long portfolio of activities, not only the budget support. So we will continue supporting Malawi,” said Zaghloul.
AfDB’s portfolio in Malawi is currently valued at over US$1 billion and the bank is providing sector budget of over US$26 million targeting the health and education sectors.
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