Lilongwe South lawmaker Peter Dimba has said Malawi is in an economic mess by choice.
Dimba was contributing to the Mid-year Budget Review Statement presented by Finance Minister Simplex Chithyola Banda recently.
According to Dimba, for the past three years, the people of Malawi have chosen not to grow the economy.
“Prosperity, growth or success is by choice. It is not by default. It is something that is born out of an intentionality. You make an intention to prosper or to do well and over the past 30 years, we haven’t shown that seriousness for us to grow and prosper as a nation,” Dimba said.
According to Dimba in 1991 Malawi’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stood at $5.3 billion and that of Zambia and Tanzania stood at $3.3 billion and $4.9 billion, respectively.
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But Dimba said 10 years later in 2000, Malawi’s GDP shrunk to $2.5 billion while that of Zambia moved to $3.6 billion and Tanzania moved to $13 billion.
“Right now, our GDP is $13 billion. Tanzania reached $13 billion in 2000. It means that Tanzania is 23 years ahead of us because they were here 23 years ago. And yet in 1991, we were better than them, we were richer than them,” Dimba said.
He added that from 2000 we have moved the GDP from $2.5 billion to $13 billion while over the same period Zambia has moved from $3.6 billion to $28 billion. He said Tanzania’s GDP is now at $77 billion.
According to Dimba, since the dawn of multiparty democracy, Malawians changed and stopped loving their country.
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Making his contribution, Kasungu Central MP, Ken Kandodo said Malawi needs to have a critical review of her National Export Strategy to make sure that the strategy delivers the desired result.
The former Finance Minister said since a third of Malawi’s area is covered by water, it could be ideal for the country to invest more energy in fisheries.
“Malawi ought to be exporting a lot of fish to other countries. Secondly, commercial farming. We used to have so many commercial farmers like Press Agriculture for example. And in those days these companies could export huge volumes of various crops. But also, Admarc used to have major investments,” Kandodo said.
