The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Malawi mission leader, Oral Williams, has said he would have loved to see Malawi graduating from cycle of the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) dependence.<\/p>\n
He however said for that to happen, the country needs radical changes in some economic activities.<\/p>\n
ECF provides financial assistance to countries with protracted balance of payments problems.<\/p>\n
The facility was created under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust as part of a broader reform to make the IMF financial support more flexible and better tailored to the diverse needs of low-income countries including in times of crisis.<\/p>\n
The ECF is IMF\u2019s main tool for providing medium-term support to low-income countries and the facility may also help catalyse additional foreign aid.<\/p>\n
Williams said the country needs to move to a different way of organising its agricultural activity, which is key for economic transformation and addressing the energy deficit, which constraints economic activity.<\/p>\n
The mission leader, whose team has declared the country\u2019s economy on track after the ninth and final review of the IMF and Malawi facility agreement of 2012, said there is also need for some reforms in doing business as the current country\u2019s savings are far from being enough for graduation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would love Malawi to graduate like its peers within the East African Community but for that to happen we need to move to a different paradigm for doing agricultural activity,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n
He also said Malawi has its own gold in the fresh lake and other natural treasures which people from other countries would wish to see and bring in forex for the economy and it is his desire that 2017 should be a turnaround year for the country\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n
Williams said the mission will request the IMF Board that the final chunk of funds for the current arrangement is released to Malawi and subsequently discuss with Malawi for, possibly, a new arrangement.<\/p>\n
\u201cSubsequently, we can possibly discuss a new arrangement and priorities for Malawians,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Williams said the future is promising with the annual inflation falling to 16.1 percent in February this year, its lowest level in recent years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Malawi mission leader, Oral Williams, has said he would have loved to see Malawi graduating from cycle of the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) dependence. He however said for that to happen, the country needs radical changes in some economic activities. ECF provides financial assistance to countries with protracted balance of […]<\/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-43284","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\/43284","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=43284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43285,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43284\/revisions\/43285"}],"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=43284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}