By Mike Van Kamande

The World Bank Group says the international financial institution will continue playing a solitary role in supporting projects, capacity building to provide leadership and consideration on budgetary support.

Speaking on Friday when a team from the financial institution met with Minister of Trade and Industry in Lilongwe, World Bank country manager, Hugh Riddell, said the economy was already in a precarious situation even before Tropical Cyclone Freddy hit the country and hence the need for continued collaboration and support.

“Fuel shortages, forex scarcity, structure decline, trade imbalance are some of the challenges Malawi is facing and these affect production and the capacity to do trade. The bank partnered with Trade and Industry Ministry on a number of strategic projects and programmes of which sustainability depends on the economic turnaround.

“Effects of Cyclone Freddy have really been tragic and with low tobacco earnings a post-tobacco economy should be looked at seriously. Malawi is a small country with a smaller economy hence it needs to prioritise trade as a heartbeat of the economy,” he said.

In his remarks Trade and Industry minister Simplex Chithyola Banda said one of the challenges Malawi is facing is the unsustainable debt which should be structured or staggered.

“Having acknowledged existence of all these challenges we now need to strategize on how best to reboot the economic activities to enhance regional and international trade as well as agriculture productivity. The ministry is implementing interventions under reducing trade costs such as negotiation of a Simplified Trade regime between Malawi and Mozambique, expansion of the National Single Window and Training of its users,” he said.

Some of the World Bank supported flagship projects includes Agriculture Commercialisation (AGCOM $95m), Southern Africa Trade and Connectivity ($380m), Financial Inclusion and Entrepreneurship Scaling Project (FINES $86m) and the Agri-Policy Project ($800000)