President Lazarus Wednesday claimed that investigations by the National Intelligence Service had revealed that the current hyperinflation of prices was being deliberately caused by some Asian traders in collusion with an opposition party to make Malawians suffer.
Chakwera was speaking in Parliament when he appeared before lawmakers to answer questions.
The President has since replaced Sosten Gwengwe as Trade Minister with former Labour Minister Vitumbiko Mumba.
Since the start of 2025, Malawians have seen consumer prices rise almost daily, significantly eroding their buying power.
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Chakwera alleged that the perpetrators of the high prices were doing this so the party could use the pain inflicted on Malawians as a campaign tool to tell the public that the unfair trading and illegal pricing of goods were happening because of him.
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“But as far as I am concerned, that is betrayal of the Malawian people. In fact, I want to categorically tell the leaders of this political party that your secret plans have been exposed and will not prevail.
“I say to the leaders of this political party that your plot to overthrow my government by instigating an illegal hyperinflation of prices will not succeed,” he said.
The President did not provide details about how the alleged collusion was being executed.
Though there was no question to him on the lineup regarding the crisis of prices, Chakwera said he would respond to what his government was doing to stop this “greedy and criminal cartel” that was inflating prices around the country.
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“In fact, I have come here today primarily to announce the tough and swift actions I am already taking to deal with this conspiracy of illegally distorting market prices for political gain.
“I have, of course, already been warned that the people doing this are dangerous and want me to simply leave them alone because they are the real owners of Malawi, but I refuse to be intimidated in my own country,” the President said.
Chakwera has since directed Mumba to put in place a market price cap order, which restricts the maximum price at which essential goods should be sold.
He said the order would regulate the percentage of profit that traders could make.
Regarding inaccuracies in the State of the Nation Address (Sona) which he delivered on February 14 and which have attracted widespread condemnation, Chakwera said it was incorrect to claim that the Sona was full of lies.
He insisted that only two percent of the information presented in the address could be inaccurate.
Chakwera said the construction of a Sona went through nine different stages involving no fewer than 75 technocrats.
He piled the blame on “a team of five technocrats who had inadvertently transferred two per cent of the verified data from the ministries into the wrong categories of my unified data matrix”.
The President then told the House that the five technocrats had since been summoned and reprimanded, and that the head of the team had been fired from his position.
Human Rights Defenders Coalition Chairperson Gift Trapence has since asked the President to reveal the identities of the officials who allegedly gave him incorrect information.
“Who is the team leader? Who are these individuals or technocrats who lied to the President?
Are they holding public offices? What does it mean to fire him as a team leader? Is it the same as firing him from the public office he holds because of a loss of trust?
“There is a need for real accountability here by naming the technocrats and the one who has been fired,” Trapence said.
Soon after the President stood to start answering questions from the lawmakers, opposition MPs stormed out of the House, leaving only a handful of independent MPs on the opposition benches.
Briefing reporters later, the opposition lawmakers, led by their leader George Chaponda, said they walked out because the Sona was unconstitutional, apparently because it did not highlight what the government had done the previous year or what it intended to do in the coming year.
“Secondly, we said there were a number of things the President said that were untrue. They were incorrect and had even been agreed upon by the Members of Parliament for Rumphi West.
“He had said what the President mentioned was not true. Similarly, there were places that he was mentioning that were not true,” Chaponda said.
He added that Chakwera had not tackled in the Sona major issues affecting the common person in this country—issues of inflation, forex shortages and food security.
Leader of the House Richard Chimwendo Banda said it was shameful that the opposition lawmakers had opted to walk out of the House instead of asking questions to the President.
