Chief Justice (CJ) Lovemore Munlo has expressed confidence in the newly-established Masters of Law programme in Commercial Law at the University of Malawi’s Chancellor College, saying it will attract investment in the country.
Munlo said this on Friday during the launch of National Bank of Malawi (NBM)-funded K50 million (about $200 000) sponsorship of the establishment of the chair of LLM in commercial law, Justice Dr. Michael Mtambo and the launch of the Commercial Law at the institution.
The new programme will complement the Commercial Court which needs specialised personnel to administer justice and give confidence to investors and the business community in the country.
Munlo said the new programme will complement government efforts to improve commercial activities as the crop from the new programme would help in expediting things such as setting up companies in the country.
NBM chief executive officer George Partridge said his bank noted that the education system has until now, provided undergraduate training in law that has no specialisation and as a result, the business community engages multi-tasking legal counsel who handle various other unrelated cases.
He said although there has been a lot of interest in areas of human rights law, constitutional law, gender law and other related areas which have attracted generous funding from various sympathisers, commercial law has not yet attracted generous funding.
“I remember when National Bank was listing on the Malawi Stock Exchange; there was a very thin choice of corporate lawyers, most of whom were expatriates, to handle the legal aspects of listing,” he said.
He said in recent times, it has been taking an average of 42 procedures/processes and 471 days to chase a bad debt or to wind up or liquidate a company at an average cost of 142 percent of the disputed amount.
