IMF’s Oestreicher concludes mission
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Resident Representative to Malawi, Geoffrey Oestreicher, has left the country and has returned to Washington DC after a three-year mission.
Oestreicher confirmed the development in an email on Wednesday. He said the Fund has appointed Jack Ree as new resident representative for Malawi.
Oestreicher, who succeeded Ruby Randal, came to Malawi in 2013, just before the outbreak of Malawi’s worst financial scandal, the Cashgate, in which some civil servants connived with private sector players to swindle government of over K20 billion.
During his tenure, Malawi’s relationship with the Fund was lukewarm as the country’s Extended Credit Facility programme with IMF was off-track for most of the time.
Ministry of Finance spokesperson, Nations Msowoya, on Thursday described Oestreicher as a professional and an experienced diplomat. He said Treasury benefited immensely from his contributions when he was at the helm of the IMF office in Malawi.
“The fact that we were able to get back the Extended Credit Facility Programme shows that the IMF local office also played a significant part although we played the bigger role as a country,” Msowoya said.
IMF Executive Board in June extended Malawi’s ECF arrangement to end December 2016 to give the authorities more time to achieve the original objectives of the programme.
However, analysts are of the view that conclusion of the seventh and eighth review of the Extended Credit Facility Programme is not an indication that the economy is stabilising.
In an earlier interview, President of the Economics Association of Malawi, Henry Kachaje, said while it is good news that Malawi is back on track with the IMF, a lot more still needs to be done to ensure the economy recovers in the face of new economic challenges the country is experiencing resulting from poor maize harvest.
Kachaje said it is unlikely that inflation will come down significantly owing to the fact that food prices might remain prohibitively high for most of the rural population.
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