{"id":79223,"date":"2019-06-17T03:52:48","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T01:52:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=79223"},"modified":"2019-06-17T03:52:48","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T01:52:48","slug":"inequality-gap-widens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2019\/06\/17\/inequality-gap-widens\/","title":{"rendered":"Inequality gap widens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Feston Malekezo:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/kalua.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-26663 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/kalua-300x162.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"162\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/kalua-300x162.jpg 300w, https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/kalua-610x332.jpg 610w, https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/kalua.jpg 614w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Economist Ben Kalua has said Malawi is nowhere near attaining its dream of narrowing the gap between the poor and the rich.<\/p>\n<p>Kulua, a Chancellor College-based economics professor, was reacting to a recent report by Oxfam which shows that inequality was spiralling out of control in the country.<\/p>\n<p>The Oxfam report, titled \u2018A Dangerous Divide; The State of Inequality in Malawi\u2019, estimates that, by 2020, 1.5 million more Malawians would be poorer.<\/p>\n<p>The number is a rise from 8 million people recorded in 2015.<\/p>\n<p>The report states that, unless Malawi acts to reduce cases of inequality, even rapid economic growth would fail to reduce poverty in the country.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview, Kalua blamed illiteracy and inconcestencies in policy formulation<\/p>\n<p>Kalua said Malawi experienced fast economic growth just 15 years after independence and that inequality gap has been wide since 1970s.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cWe are not anywhere near reducing the inequality gap. Most people remain uneducated and continue staying in rural areas to supply cheap labour in tobacco fields,\u201d<\/em> Kalua said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He further said the skills gap was also still wide in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Oxfam has said limited access to education, lack of recognition of inequality as a challenge, inequities in access to quality health services and ineffective implementation of gender-sensitive economic policies lead to inequality in Malawi.<\/p>\n<p>A 2019 African Economic Outlook Report commissioned by the African Development Bank painted a gloomy picture of Malawi\u2019s poverty levels, showing that poverty remains widespread at 51.5 percent nationwide as at 2017, up from 50.4 percent in 2010.<\/p>\n<p>The report states that poverty stands at 56.6 percent largely because of food insecurity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Feston Malekezo: Economist Ben Kalua has said Malawi is nowhere near attaining its dream of narrowing the gap between the poor and the rich. Kulua, a Chancellor College-based economics professor, was reacting to a recent report by Oxfam which shows that inequality was spiralling out of control in the country. The Oxfam report, titled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":38926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79223","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\/79223","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=79223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79224,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79223\/revisions\/79224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}