Malawi considers #BRICS key to development plans

Johannesburg – President of Malawi, Peter Mutharika, was unequivocal in his support for the BRICS in raising awareness of the summit with African leaders on Friday.
"Malawi has a 22-year infrastructure master plan – we need roads, railways and airports, and the creation of the Development Bank will facilitate access to funds for infrastructure development, "Mutharika said.

Malawi is one of the poorest countries on the continent and it views the NDB as a potential way to leverage loans at lower concessional interest rates and without the onerous conditions of the Bank World. "South Africa has been good at involving African countries in the BRICS, Africa has a voice and South Africa has to speak for us," Mutharika said. For countries like Malawi, it is important to have an organization that represents the interests of the developing South. More than half of Malawi's exports are raw tobacco and rely heavily on it for foreign exchange. Government plans to locally enrich their tobacco have met with strong resistance from tobacco buyers who want to continue to price tobacco through the auction process. Tobacco is one of the few internationally unregulated products, and buyers decide what they will pay, resulting in an operating process

"If Malawi can to obtain funding from NDB to transform its own tobacco, "Like tobacco, Malawi wants to enrich its own cotton so that instead of just exporting the raw product, it can turn it into yarn, thus developing its own cotton"

"Our greatest challenge is to transform our country from a consumer economy into a productive economy so that we have value-added products to export."

African Leaders who attended the BRICS Plus Outreach with African leaders on Friday.For them, the NDB offers in the future the opportunity to mobilize loans from an alternative institution to international financial institutions dominated by the West [19659002] With CNN declaring Malawi among the top 15 tourist destinations in the world, Malawi is desperately in need of development funding to improve its infrastructure for tourism purposes. "We would like to attract high-end tourists, and to do that we need to build five-star hotels, upgrade our lake and establish hotel schools." The hope is that such a vision can be achieved with BRICS assistance Under the leadership of Mutharika, Malawi moved from a country that was virtually bankrupt four years ago when it took office, with a deficit equal to its budget. annual budget, and 40% of its budget came from donor funding. Today, the country manages to finance 90% of its own budget and inflation has been reduced from 42% to 8%.

Mutharika strictly applied good governance, reducing his cabinet from 40 to 18 ministers

. opportunities to capitalize and responsible government in place, the prospects for investors in Malawi are enormous. The message just needs to realize that Malawi is one of the good news of Africa

Independent Media