The Economics Association of Malawi (Ecama) has asked the Reserve Bank of Malawi to review its monetary policy in view of the high cost of living in the country.<\/p>\n
Ecama Executive Director, Edward Chilima, told a local radio station that time has come for RBM to deliberately lower interest rates.<\/p>\n
\u201cTime has come for the central bank to deliberately make a move to reduce the interest rates. Interest rates are too high and if we address such issues we will also be addressing the hardships that Malawians are facing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Chilima said the current increase in prices of goods and services shows there are fundamental problems in our economy.<\/p>\n
He said the country has very serious problems that must be addressed.<\/p>\n
Chilima said if the interest rates stand at what they are at the moment, production becomes very high.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you are producing and the cost is very high, producers shift the cost to the consumer, because they are trying to recover from the high interest rates,\u201d said Chilima.<\/p>\n
He further said the other area that needs attention is addressing the foreign exchange rate.<\/p>\n
Chilima said the exchange rate is fragile and most local companies are importing companies, hence they are importing at a very high cost.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the companies to survive, they need to pass on the cost to the consumer. This significantly contributes to the high cost of living in the country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Apart from the high interest rate and the fragile of the exchange rate, Chilima said food shortage is another factor that is contributing to the cost of living.<\/p>\n
He said the rule of supply and demand is currently playing on the market, hence the leadership needs to provide solutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe blame on the increase in prices of commodities cannot go to the producer, because they are just responding to what the economy is offering. It\u2019s tough time and we need to take to task those that are in authority so that they address these issues and create an environment where as a country we are able to produce more,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
However, RBM Spokesperson, Mbane Ngwira, on Tuesday refused to comment on the matter, saying they only comment on facts and not opinions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Economics Association of Malawi (Ecama) has asked the Reserve Bank of Malawi to review its monetary policy in view of the high cost of living in the country. Ecama Executive Director, Edward Chilima, told a local radio station that time has come for RBM to deliberately lower interest rates. \u201cTime has come for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17675,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17672\/revisions\/17675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}