By Linda Kwanjana
Former Minister of Trade and Industry, Sosten Alfred Gwengwe has challenged Malawians to take advantage of Agriculture, Tourism, Mining and Manufacturing strategy (ATMM) in order for the country to navigate through global economic turbulence which the countries are going through.
Speaking at Dowa District Community Ground where Malaw Congress Party (MCP) Secretary General , Richard Chimwendo Banda held a political rally, Gwengwe said the economic policies that Malawi has been following since we went into democracy, have not really produced the Malawi that we have always dreamed of economically.
Gwengwe said “So we are very proud that the President has come up with his own boldness to reset the economy so that it’s a self reliant I will tell you that if you go to Europe, if you go to America, everybody is now talking of, say, America First or Europe First. You know that USAID is now closing down, and we have been relying on USAID for our health care, for our education and many, many other things,” he said.
According to Gwengwe, the only wise leader, or the only wise thing a leader, can do, really, is to start looking at home grown policies that can help this country turn around and start relying on their own homegrown policies and their own economic policies as what Dr Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera is championing through ATM agenda.
“That is why the President is saying, let’s go and do redo our agriculture. Let’s go and do our mining. Let’s go and do our tourism in a way that in the next few years, we should be self reliant and not be bothered of the policies that are happening in Europe or the policies that are happening in the US or anywhere else. And that is painful,” he said.
The former Minister said that cannot just happen without feeling the pain, sunce everybody believe, in Dr Lazarus Chakwera as a bold and visionally, and we know that what is resetting is going to bear fruits no time from now.
Gwengwe said, when Chakwera came as president in 2019 he was robbed of the victory in 2019 but he did something else which previous MCP leaders had not done, and he went to court, and he won that case, and that is why MCP is in government today.
So for him, he is a man. We know him for enough is enough. It was enough, then it’s also enough. Now about our economic policies and the reset burden that he has hit, we believe in him that he’s going to bear fruit soon enough.
According to Gwengwe what US President Mr Donald Trump has done is a wake up call that as a country lets stand on our own fit and generate our own money.
