Special Editorial Comment

It is not usual that Malawi Financial Mirror comments on current event. But these are special times. Malawi now has a new head of state, thrust into power by the fateful death of her predecessor and tormentor. She inherits an economy in a messy and enters a situation that dramatically illustrates Malawi dependence. She has little room for manoeuvre and she will have to do the bidding of those who hold strings to the purse.  The IMF will be baying for devaluation. We advise her not to waste too much time arguing about this. The real issue is how much money she can get from the institutions to stimulate the economy and to protect the more vulnerable members of society. She is in a good position to make the argument that our fragile democracy has survived for more than three years extremely trying circumstances and that any further push down the hill will hurt the prospects of Malawi’s shining democracy.  She may not be able to make this case with international financial institutions with their usual formulaic view of things but she should be able to mobilise some of the bilateral for a stimulus and social protection to help the transition.

Malawi should be able to attain good rates of growth within a short period of time if the forex problem is addressed.

Malawi should base its recovery around the following things: (a) diversification of our exports, (b) extension of the road infrastructure throughout the country (c) addressing the electricity problem and (d) significant expansion of the system of higher education. These items are closely related and they ought to be addressed in a coordinated and well-thought way. The President should avoid sporadic forays into highly idiosyncratic policies and projects and insist that the initiatives have sound technical and economic basis. She should also avoid rule by decre.

The allocation of projects should reflect national needs and not ethnic biases as became increasingly clear under Bingu’s reign.

There are a lot of skills within Malawi to see these projects through but that requires a dedicated, confident and meritocratic public service. For the civil service two things matter – a esprit des corps and merit-based hierarchy. The new government must do away with the untested reforms introduced by donors in which many tasks in the civil service were contracted out. This has caused unnecessary costs, corruption and demoralisation of the civil service. The recent story of hospitals relying on expensive external specialist rather than hiring their own speaks to this problem.