Malawi’s adherence to fiscal discipline has resulted into more development activities - African Development Bank President

THE African Development Bank (AfDB) has assured government it would continue to allocate more funds to the country’s development projects.

This was said by the bank’s president Donald Kaberuka during a banquet hosted by State President Bingu wa Mutharika at Sanjika Palace on Wednesday.

Kaberuka commended Malawi’s adherence to fiscal discipline which has resulted into more development activities and pointed out that the bank’s budgetary support allocation for the country is currently awaiting ratification by the AfDB Group.

“We subscribe to Malawi’s development paper (MGDS) which is being implemented for long term purposes. We will be offering secondary resources for countries to boost production,” said Kaberuka.

But he said the challenge would be for government’s to ensure growth in financial, energy and commodity sectors.

He added that the bank is opening 25 offices to decentralise its operations and nine of them would be opened in Southern Africa.

In his remarks President Mutharika said it was pleasing that government has for the past four years implemented the priorities under the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS) which include agriculture and food security, irrigation and water development, transport and communications.

“After implementing these top priorities for the last four years we have achieved remarkable stability in our macroeconomic indicators. The average annual growth rate between 2005/2007 was above 7 percent per annum.

Inflation dropped from 17.1 percent in 2004 to about 7.8 in 2007. Our foreign exchange rate has been stable and predictable,” said Mutharika.

Early last month the AfDB approved a loan and two grants amounting to US$ 47.5 million (around K7 billion) to finance the country’s National Water Development (NWDP).

NWDP is in line with the MGDS and it covers rural and urban areas throughout the entire country with a target of having 80 percent coverage for improved water supply and sanitation by 2015.