The Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development says Malawi\u2019s over-reliance on donor grants to finance its trade deficit is not sustainable.<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s trade balance is estimated at a deficit of US$1.4 billion last year but this was offset by donor inflow and significant Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).<\/p>\n
This resulted onto country\u2019s registering an overall Balance of Payments (BOP) surplus of US$298.6 million last year from US$185.8 million the previous year, the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) figures show.<\/p>\n
Finance Ministry spokesperson, Nations Msowoya, said this continues to expose the country to external shocks, expressing the need to expand the export base through export diversification.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a sustainable situation as it is subjected to policies in the giving countries and this situation continues to expose the country to external shocks,\u201d said Msowoya.<\/p>\n
Financial Account net inflows are estimated at US$997.2 million last year compared to US$981.3 million in 2013.<\/p>\n
Of the total inflows, the central bank estimates net foreign direct investment at US$643.8 million, whereas net portfolio investment and other investments is projected at US$8.4 million and US$345.0 million, respectively.<\/p>\n
However, the Finance Ministry says it has financed several projects to help improve the doing business environment and trade facilitation to increase forex from trade.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe negotiated for the project that the World Bank has just endorsed to finance trade facilitation through [four] One Stop Border posts and we are investing in the improvement of doing business environment and all these efforts are to help improve the country\u2019s trade,\u201d said Msowoya.<\/p>\n
He expressed optimism that with investments made in sugar industry under the Greenbelt Initiative, things will improve in exports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development says Malawi\u2019s over-reliance on donor grants to finance its trade deficit is not sustainable. The country\u2019s trade balance is estimated at a deficit of US$1.4 billion last year but this was offset by donor inflow and significant Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). This resulted onto country\u2019s registering an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1967","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\/1967","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=1967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1974,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1967\/revisions\/1974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}