The Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) says the US$250 million debt swap facility for Malawi from the PTA Bank did not come at once, saying it is a standby facility from which Malawi can access funds over a three year period.<\/p>\n
RBM spokesperson, Mbane Ngwira, says even without the loan, Malawi\u2019s import cover would still have been adequate since the reserves have been at over US$900 million for the past six months.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if we did not borrow from the PTA Bank, we would still have around US$750 million in our reserves now,\u201d said Ngwira.<\/p>\n
The US$250 million PTA facility is an equivalent to about 1.5 months\u2019 worth of import cover according to Ngwira.<\/p>\n
Malawi accessed the facility late last year to caution and moderate against the seasonality of the country\u2019s foreign exchange cash flow.<\/p>\n
Some economic analysts have, however, blamed the government for borrowing to boost foreign exchange reserves, saying this was an artificial and unsustainable way of addressing forex woes.<\/p>\n
Commenting on the observations, Ngwira said there was nothing wrong with the borrowing as the arrangement is used as a standby facility.<\/p>\n
He said the money is also payable in local currency, which<\/p>\n
may not have an effect on the forex position of the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bank would be able to channel the cash within the system through various companies on the local market,\u201d said Ngwira.<\/p>\n
Ngwira said the borrowing was done through an issued paper whose repayment will be done after maturity in three years\u2019 time.<\/p>\n
Ministry of Finance spokesperson, Nations Msowoya, collaborated Ngwira, saying the funds are there to be used in cases of any eventuality.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe money is there to caution and to moderate the seasonality in our forex cash flow as there are some times when the local currency\u2019s performance is compromised,\u201d said Msowoya.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) says the US$250 million debt swap facility for Malawi from the PTA Bank did not come at once, saying it is a standby facility from which Malawi can access funds over a three year period. RBM spokesperson, Mbane Ngwira, says even without the loan, Malawi\u2019s import cover would still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4274","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\/4274","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=4274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4278,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4274\/revisions\/4278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}