TWO weeks after the International Monetary Fund ( IMF) approved the disbursement of the ninth and final tranche under its Extended Credit Facility (ECF) programme with Malawi, the bank says chances are high for Malawi authorities to negotiate a new programme.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Finance Minister, Goodall Gondwe, said government was considering making a fresh application for the same facility in the near future. Then, IMF Resident Representative to Malawi, Jack Ree, had indicated that Malawi may not need an extension.<\/p>\n
The ECF programme\u2014 which was valued at $146.7 million\u2014aimed at achieving and maintaining macroeconomic stability and implementation of policies and structural reforms to spur growth, diversify the economy and reduce poverty.<\/p>\n
In a written response to a questionnaire, Ree said the IMF is impressed with how government has managed to stabilise the economy and inflation levels since the start of the ECF programme in 2012.<\/p>\n
\u201c The ECF was successfully concluded in June. Given the high interests shown by Malawi authorities, and the successful completion of the current programme, there is a good chance to see negotiations for another programme,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also hailed the policy rate cut by the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM), saying it is consistently focused towards a decisive victory over inflation before the policy gear is shifted to regrowing the economy in an inclusive manner.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think that the market feels fairly confident with the authorities commitments as seen by the recent movement of kwacha which has been super stable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ree, however, advised authorities to ensure that the fixed pipes for public f i n a n c e management do not break again and move reforms to more sophisticated sources of leaks, such as procurement.<\/p>\n
IMF further said Malawi was able to achieve about s even per c e n t growth between 2004 and 2011, adding that the growth decelerated to 3.6 percent between 2012 and 2016 when inflation averaged 23.4 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TWO weeks after the International Monetary Fund ( IMF) approved the disbursement of the ninth and final tranche under its Extended Credit Facility (ECF) programme with Malawi, the bank says chances are high for Malawi authorities to negotiate a new programme. Earlier, Finance Minister, Goodall Gondwe, said government was considering making a fresh application for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":50149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50147","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\/50147","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=50147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50152,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50147\/revisions\/50152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}