Parliament has passed an insertion to the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Act which forces government to buy a minimum of 60 percent of its procurement needs from black indigenous Malawians.<\/p>\n
The insertion of Clause 44 sub-section 10 of the Act was proposed by Karonga Central MP, Frank Mwenifumbo, and was passed by Parliament recently.<\/p>\n
Mwenifumbo argued in the house that though Malawi has enjoyed 53 years of political independence, Malawians remain financially dependent because most of the business by government is controlled by foreigners.<\/p>\n
The legislator argued that having a legislation which could force government and its ministries as well as departments to offer a bulk of its contracts to black indigenous Malawians could be the only way of making Malawians financially stable.<\/p>\n
In an interview last week, Mwenifumbo said government being a major buyer in the country needs to start taking steps to economically empower its citizens.<\/p>\n
He argued most of the poverty in Malawi is man-made, saying the procurement laws in the past favoured foreigners at the expense of locals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am happy that the insertion of the clause was passed by Parliament. Time has come for Malawians to be financially stable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI strongly believe that by having a lion\u2019s share of government business, Malawians will develop and be able to finance their own budget,\u201d said Mwenifumbo.<\/p>\n
The insertion was passed with other amendments of the Act aimed at curbing corruption in the awarding of contracts.<\/p>\n
The house also passed an amendment curtailing of powers of the president in the appointment of the director of the office of public procurement.<\/p>\n
Commenting on the amendments, Indigenous Businesses Association of Malawi (Ibam) president Mike Mlombwa hailed parliamentarians for putting the economic wellbeing of Malawians first.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what we have been fighting for for many years. With legislation in place, government officials will be forced to comply, thereby empowering indigenous Malawians.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is unfortunate that for the past 53 years, there has been no single indigenous Malawian who we can comfortably identify as being a billionaire in dollar terms. This is the beginning of good things to come,\u201d Mlombwa said.<\/p>\n
He appealed to local Malawians to ensure that the quality of goods supplied to government is high.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the indigenous Malawians economically empowered, I see no reason why we should struggle to finance our national budget,\u201d Mlombwa said.<\/p>\n
He added that foreigners are welcome to partner indigenous Malawians to ensure a win-win situation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Parliament has passed an insertion to the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Act which forces government to buy a minimum of 60 percent of its procurement needs from black indigenous Malawians. The insertion of Clause 44 sub-section 10 of the Act was proposed by Karonga Central MP, Frank Mwenifumbo, and was passed by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":50026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50023","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\/50023","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=50023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50030,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50023\/revisions\/50030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}