Dual-listed conglomerate, Press Corporation Limited (PCL), says despite Malawi\u2019s economy still facing some challenges, prospects are high for a more stable environment in the remaining half of 2017 as key fundamentals have now taken on a positive trajectory.<\/p>\n
The trend, according to PCL Chairperson, Patrick Khembo, offers hope to instill confidence in the private sector.<\/p>\n
Khembo was speaking during PCL\u2019s 33rd Annual General Meeting (AGM) last Thursday in Blantyre where the group also unveiled results for the year ending December 31, 2016.<\/p>\n
He said 2017 promises to be a better year with an expected Gross Domestic Product growth of 5.6 percent led by a recovery in agriculture production.<\/p>\n
Khembo, however, feared that the local unit, the Malawi kwacha, may still depreciate gradually due to continuing underperformance in the external sector.<\/p>\n
This, he said, may still pile pressure on the system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are, however, looking at a year that is reasonably promising. We are positive that provided we work on such issues like electricity, the rest of the year is going to be good,\u201d Khembo said.<\/p>\n
In the year to December 2016, the conglomerate registered a profit of K17.21 billion from K12.24 billion in the prior period, representing a 43 percent increase.<\/p>\n
Khembo attributed the positive outturn to prudent performance of the group and some of its subsidiaries including National Bank of Malawi (NBM) and TNM, which also closed the year on a positive note.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a mean fit considering that we had a very challenging environment. The business environment was very hostile,\u201d Khembo said.<\/p>\n
Still, some of the group\u2019s entities underperformed in the year, forcing the group to rework its turnaround approach.<\/p>\n
At the AGM, the group declared a final dividend of K1.50 billion, representing K12.50 per share.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dual-listed conglomerate, Press Corporation Limited (PCL), says despite Malawi\u2019s economy still facing some challenges, prospects are high for a more stable environment in the remaining half of 2017 as key fundamentals have now taken on a positive trajectory. The trend, according to PCL Chairperson, Patrick Khembo, offers hope to instill confidence in the private sector. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":49565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49563","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\/49563","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=49563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49566,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49563\/revisions\/49566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}