The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said its visiting mission team, expected in the country next week\u2014to discuss the next Extended Credit Facility (ECF)\u2014will attend part of the Mid-Term Budget Review session to get an understanding of the performance of the 2017\/2018 Budget.<\/p>\n
The IMF and Ministry of Finance confirmed the visit on Wednesday. The team is expected to spend two weeks in the country and will hold meetings with different stakeholders, before engaging authorities on the next programme.<\/p>\n
In an interview, IMF Malawi Resident Representative, Jack Ree, said attending the budget review session is important for the mission as it will provide an insight on what to include in the next programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe team, comprising five people, including the Mission Chief, Pritha Mitra, from the IMF headquarters in Washington DC, arrives on January 31 in Lilongwe, months after an assessment of the previous ECF, which mainly focused on macro-economic stability,\u201d Ree said.<\/p>\n
He said the IMF hopes to get some guidelines on Malawi\u2019s plan for the Mid-Term-Budget before the end of the mission and provide meaningful inputs.<\/p>\n
Ree said during the discussions, the mission would try to identify ways to tackle unfinished project from the previous programme while safeguarding and building on the gains made.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to find ways of addressing Malawi\u2019s huge infrastructure investment needs, including the energy sector, in a fiscally sustainable fashion,\u201d Ree said.<\/p>\n
In a separate interview, Spokesperson for the Ministry of Finance, Davis Sado, said the pillar for the new ECF programme is on micro-economic stability, so as to enhance growth of the country\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n
He said government is focusing on managing interest rates and other fundamentals to spur growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are prepared for these talks after holding consultations with various stakeholders on the previous ECF. We think the private sector is covered with the pending new facility,\u201d Sado said.<\/p>\n
Close to the end of 2017, IMF and the government said Malawians should expect a new programme, probably in the second quarter of 2018.<\/p>\n
The development follows the conclusion, in June 2017, of a three-year ECF amounting to $156.2 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said its visiting mission team, expected in the country next week\u2014to discuss the next Extended Credit Facility (ECF)\u2014will attend part of the Mid-Term Budget Review session to get an understanding of the performance of the 2017\/2018 Budget. The IMF and Ministry of Finance confirmed the visit on Wednesday. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":55973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59596","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\/59596","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=59596"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59645,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59596\/revisions\/59645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}