Despite Blantyre being referred to as Malawi\u2019s commercial capital, a latest Business Information Register (BIR) report by the National Statistical Office has shown that Lilongwe leads the country\u2019s cities in both the number of businesses and job creation.<\/p>\n
The report, released last month, provides detailed information on the economic activities of micro, small, medium and large-scale profit-making businesses in the country.<\/p>\n
The report says Lilongwe city has at least 27 percent of all businesses in Malawi, and employs on average about 50 percent of total persons employed.<\/p>\n
Blantyre city has the second largest share of businesses, almost 20 percent, and on average about 21 percent of employees.<\/p>\n
The report further says Mzuzu and Zomba cities are almost at par, accounting for almost seven percent of businesses and at least two percent of employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cClearly, the cities of Malawi have the largest share of businesses compared to other towns. In terms of districts, Mzimba district has the highest percentage of businesses in the northern region (two percent) while Kasungu district has the highest percentage of businesses in the central region (three percent).<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the southern region, Mangochi district has the highest percentage of businesses (6 percent). On the other end of the scale, Ntchisi has the least proportion of businesses in the BIR,\u201d reads the report in part.<\/p>\n
Wholesale and retail trade, according to the report, is the leading sector of business in Malawi, with at least 45 percent of businesses, followed by manufacturing at 14 percent, with the hospitality sector comprising hotels, bars and restaurants making up almost 12 percent of businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the other side of the scale, arts, entertainment and recreation; construction; utilities and mining and quarrying sectors are contributing less than one percent each to the number of businesses in Malawi,\u201d says the report.<\/p>\n
The distribution of employment by industry shows that public administration is the leading sector, with over a quarter of total employees, followed by manufacturing and wholesale and retail trade sector, with almost 15 percent of total employees.<\/p>\n
Mining and quarrying sector has the lowest number of employees, slightly over 800 employees.<\/p>\n
The report also reveals that at national level, 79 percent of total employees in the BIR establishments are males.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne quarter of the persons employed in the central region are women and it is more than in the southern region which has 17 percent of women in total employment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis means that in every four men employed, there is a woman as an employee in the establishments in the central region. In the northern region, the proportion of women as employees is 22 percent, this is higher than in the southern region,\u201d reads the report in part.<\/p>\n
Commissioner of Statistics Mercy Kanyuka said the BIR is an essential tool for industrial statistics, saying it serves as a statistical sampling frame for Industrial Surveys.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt further serves as an important tool for managing an industrial census and controlling for under-coverage.<\/p>\n
\u201cConsequently, an efficient system for updating the BIR is essential for the preparation of reliable time series for employment, turnover and business demography in the industrial sector,\u201d said Kanyuka.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite Blantyre being referred to as Malawi\u2019s commercial capital, a latest Business Information Register (BIR) report by the National Statistical Office has shown that Lilongwe leads the country\u2019s cities in both the number of businesses and job creation. The report, released last month, provides detailed information on the economic activities of micro, small, medium and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27068","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\/27068","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=27068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27100,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27068\/revisions\/27100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}