Vice-President Saulos Chilima has challenged Malawi’s top economists to provide alternative policy options to equip the economy with tools needed to absorb, adapt and recover from unexpected events and shocks.
Chilima was speaking in Mangochi yesterday at the start of the 2023 Economics Association of Malawi (Ecama) Annual Conference being conducted under the theme ‘Fortifying Economic Growth from Shocks’.
He said in recent years, the country has witnessed how negative external shocks to the economy can create much instability and lead to persistent periods of weaker economic growth, higher unemployment, falling real incomes and rising poverty.
The Vice President added that Malawi has experienced recurrent episodes of exogenous shocks, including adverse weather conditions such as floods, tropical cyclones and droughts; health crises such as the Covid pandemic and the cholera outbreak.
He challenged the economists to be candid in their deliberations so as to come up with practical solutions to the country’s economic challenges.
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“In this conference, we have to be open and candid with one another. Some of the problems that we have as a country are because we are too nice to each other. We sugar-coat things.
“I dare you that we have to openly and gallantly brainstorm and explore practical solutions to protect our economy from random and unpredictable events that have a widespread impact and are caused by effects outside the scope of economic models,” Chilima said.
Ecama outgoing president Lauryn Nyasulu reiterated that Malawi has experienced the worst shocks within the last decade and severely in the past three years.
She cited the Covid pandemic, dry spells and floods caused by tropical cyclones, as well as the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war as some of the shocks.
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“Cyclone Freddy alone damaged critical infrastructure and production, estimated at over $600 million, and led to a loss of 0.5 percent of GDP…
“These shocks have significantly affected our ailing economy and continue to pose a threat to the achievement of our developmental aspirations,” Nyasulu said.
Late yesterday, Ecama held its annual general meeting which saw Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences associate professor of economics Betchani Tchereni being elected new president of the association.
Tchereni amassed 32 votes to beat his contender Andrew Kumbatira who got 30 votes.
