Malawians want inclusive wealth creation—NPC
The National Planning Commission (NPC) says Malawians want a country that is focused on inclusive wealth creation and self-reliance, built on increased productivity and commercialisation of agriculture, resource-based industrialisation and urbanisation.
NPC director general Thomas Chataghalala Munthali said in Mzuzu on Friday during an interaction with Nyika Media Club that this vision was derived from consultations they are conducting to come up with the National Transformation 2063 Agenda, which is a successor to the Vision 2020.
He said they will be engaging political parties so that they align their manifestos with this vision by clearly stating how they will achieve the will of the people.
Said Munthali: “For us to achieve what we want, seven enablers are coming out. First is mindset change, which include having a positive value system; effective governance systems and institutions that includes visionary leadership, as well as active citizen engagement; then effective public sector performance, this means no tolerance for mediocrity, but performance in its totality.
“We will also need private sector dynamism, which is cutting across all the pillars like commercialisation, urbanisation, economic infrastructure which includes energy, transport and information communication technology; environmental sustainability and finally human capital development.”
On his part, governance expert Makhumbo Munthali said there has to be deliberate measures to reach out to the public servants, who are implementers of the vision to understand the new agenda and align with their existing work.
Findings from a review exercise of Vision 2020 validated in November last year in Lilongwe revealed that despite Malawi making progress in some indicators during the implementation period, the country failed to meet most of the targets with the performance rated under-par and below the world’s average in some instances.
Oliver Saasa, proprietor and lead consultant of Premier Consult Limited, a firm which reviewed and analysed the performance of Vision 2020, said blueprint’s poor performance suggests that Malawi requires a more realistic development path.
