The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Malawi (ICAM) has called on government to create an environment that would enable a drop of interest rates to 22 percent.<\/p>\n
ICAM\u2019s member of audit and taxation, Audrey Mwala, made the call last Thursday during the 2016\/17 pre-budget consultation meeting hosted by Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe.<\/p>\n
According to Mwala, the high interest rates, now hovering around 40 percent, have increased the cost of production by the private sector.<\/p>\n
She said increased government borrowing through Treasury Bills (TBs) is also crowding out the private sector from borrowing as the TBs rates are more attractive.<\/p>\n
\u201cICAM is requesting government to take a deliberate bold action of immediately cutting down the interest rates to possibly around 22 percent,\u201d suggested Mwala.<\/p>\n
Also commenting on public finance management, Mwala said despite recorded progress in covering existing loopholes, there is still a lot that needs to be done.<\/p>\n
She called on government to put more efforts on controlling public expenditure and public debt.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is an urgent need to clear the backlog in government financial reporting, and thereafter, to ensure timely financial reporting,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She said this will ensure that leakages are closed so that available resources efficiently utilised.<\/p>\n
Reacting to the calls, Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe said strides have been put to place in ensuring an effective environment for doing business and sustainable economic growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Malawi (ICAM) has called on government to create an environment that would enable a drop of interest rates to 22 percent. ICAM\u2019s member of audit and taxation, Audrey Mwala, made the call last Thursday during the 2016\/17 pre-budget consultation meeting hosted by Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe. According to Mwala, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21553","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\/21553","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=21553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21557,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21553\/revisions\/21557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}