The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has authorised government to use part of its $78.6million (K56.3 billion) extended credit facility to purchase maize.<\/p>\n
The move comes at a time when over 6.5 million Malawians are facing food shortages following El Nino-induced drought that has ravaged the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe negative impact of the El Ni\u00f1o-induced drought continues to weigh heavily on economic activity and has placed an estimated 6.5 million people at risk of food insecurity,\u201d a statement by an IMF official Oral Williams reads in part.<\/p>\n
The statement adds: \u201cIn response to the humanitarian crisis, the Executive Board of the IMF approved the disbursement of $78.6 million. Of this, $49.2 million (K35 billion) was explicitly intended to help the Malawian government finance imports of maize as part of the donor-coordinated humanitarian relief effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
The statement follows a visit last week by an IMF team led by Williams which conducted discussions on the ninth review under the ECF arrangement.<\/p>\n
The ECF, which in case of Malawi is pegged at $ 144.4 million, is a lending arrangement that provides sustained programme engagement over the medium-to long-term in case of protracted balance of payments problems.<\/p>\n
Williams explained that Malawi requires additional resources to fully fund its Food Insecurity Response Plan.<\/p>\n
On its part, Malawi has allocated about $49 million for maize purchases in the 2016\/17 budget.<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s agro-based economy is currently sailing in troubled waters due to poor harvests of its main staple food maize and low prices of its key export tobacco.<\/p>\n
In its statement, the IMF has noted that the country\u2019s economic growth has declined for a second consecutive year, reflecting sharp falls in agricultural production and electricity generation, and weak growth in credit to the private sector.<\/p>\n
According to IMF, Malawi\u2019s economic turbulence is being reflected in a number of indicators including worsening public debt, \u201cwhich has now risen from 40 percent of GDP in 2012 to 58 percent of GDP in 2016.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another Breton Wood institution, the World Bank, in July this year warned Malawians to brace for tough economic ride as hunger would make attainment of economic stability challenging.<\/p>\n
The global lender predicted that Malawi economy would grow by around 2.6 percent contrary to government\u2019s forecasted estimate of 5.1 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year has been tough because of the drought and it is coming at the back of the floods, so it\u2019s a very difficult time,\u201d observed World Bank Country Representative, Laura Kullenberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has authorised government to use part of its $78.6million (K56.3 billion) extended credit facility to purchase maize. The move comes at a time when over 6.5 million Malawians are facing food shortages following El Nino-induced drought that has ravaged the country. \u201cThe negative impact of the El Ni\u00f1o-induced drought continues […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":32976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32972","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\/32972","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=32972"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32977,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32972\/revisions\/32977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}