{"id":28360,"date":"2016-07-20T11:55:11","date_gmt":"2016-07-20T09:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=28360"},"modified":"2016-07-20T11:55:11","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T09:55:11","slug":"diversifying-the-economy-through-commodities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2016\/07\/20\/diversifying-the-economy-through-commodities\/","title":{"rendered":"Diversifying the economy through commodities"},"content":{"rendered":"

I <\/strong>was engrossed in reading a World Bank publication titled Global Agricultural Trade and Developing Countries <\/em>edited by M. Ataman Aksoy and John C. Beghin, when my eyes landed on two items on the business news page of The Nation <\/em>newspaper. One item said India and Mozambique had signed a trade protocol which will allow Mozambique to export to India 100,000 tonnes of pulses in 2016-2017.The other said in 2015, Malawi exported edible nuts worth about K76 billion.<\/p>\n

In the World Bank publication, I was reading about the production and exporting of groundnuts about 15 years ago. The publication listed Malawi among the producers of groundnuts for domestic consumption, processing and exporting.<\/p>\n

Most of us will recall days when every grocery or supermarket we entered, we found roasted groundnuts in black wrappers trade-marked Tambala Nuts. Today, we hardly come across such food items. I thought the groundnuts or pulse commodity had died completely because of lack of markets overseas. But now it appears the demand for the edible nuts abroad is greater than we are able to supply.<\/p>\n

There is much talk about Malawi\u2019s need for more engineers and technicians if economically the country is to grow exponentially, I believe, however, that even with the current supply of engineers and technicians, Malawi could achieve higher growth rates if we were better organised both in the public and private sectors. There are grave defincies of administration and management in nature.<\/p>\n

It is not the first time we have read of our failure to produce adequate commodities for the markets abroad. In case of African Growth Opportunity Act (Agoa), Americans trade concession to Africa, I understand we do not exhaust what American market can accept from us. It is more than five years ago I first learned that there is high demand for Malawian pulses in India. Mozambique has signed a deal. I do not know if Malawi too has done so with that Asian sub-continent with which we have a common colonial experience.<\/p>\n

During colonial days, the Department of Information in collaboration with business sectors advertised Malawi\u2019s tourisms potential with slogans, saying \u201cNyasaland is Scotland in a tropical setting\u201d or \u201cNyasaland is Switzerland without snow\u201d. Despite abundant attractions, Malawi as a tourist destination compares poorly with surrounding countries not to mention Kenya and South Africa. All this is because we are not organised for success.<\/p>\n

In the course of reading the World Bank publication, I noted that the United States government has a very supportive policy for the groundnuts industry through production regulation, quota, high support prices and import control. So this is what a highly industrialised country does for its agricultural sector.<\/p>\n

Maurice Chilimbilima Gondwe, who is introduced in the article mentioned above as a legumes export expert, is quoted as having said that Malawi can produce more legumes but that the smallholder farmer lacks financial and technical support. Have officials concerned taking note of this? If so, what action do they propose to pursue?<\/p>\n

Sound suggestions for invigorating the economy and alleviating poverty float in the air but nobody brings them down. Whenever someone in high office says this is everybody\u2019s responsibility, everyone says I will do this tomorrow but that tomorrow never comes. To get things done, there should be specific institutions and individuals charged with responsibilities. Are there officials and private sector executives doing something about multiplying the production of pulses?<\/p>\n

Let us get better organised for success both politically and economically. All these scandals the nation has suffered such as Cashgate can be traced to weaknesses in the administrative structure; otherwise, they could have been uncovered earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was engrossed in reading a World Bank publication titled Global Agricultural Trade and Developing Countries edited by M. Ataman Aksoy and John C. Beghin, when my eyes landed on two items on the business news page of The Nation newspaper. One item said India and Mozambique had signed a trade protocol which will allow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28360","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\/28360","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=28360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28363,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28360\/revisions\/28363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}