National Planning Commission optimistic on middle-income status
National Planning Commission (NPC) says Malawi can attain the middle-income status by 2030 if it focuses on a few tangible projects that have an impact.
In an interview on Friday, NPC director General Thomas Chataghalala Munthali said what the country needs are few tangible projects within the three pillars of the Malawi 2063 (MW2063) and the seven enablers that support it.
He said: “All we need to graduate into a middle-income economy are a few big infrastructure projects, few agricultural commercial investments, a couple of big mines and few industrial projects.
“If we focused on few projects without spreading our resources thinly, this talk of Malawi being among the poorest will be history by 2030, not even 2063.”
The MW2063 seeks to transform Malawi into a wealthy and self-reliant industrialised upper middle-income country by 2063.
The blueprint projects that if the economy grows at an annual average rate of six percent, Malawi could attain the low-middle-income status by 2030, with a per capita income of between $1 006 (K825 000) and $3 955 (about K3.2 million).
In his presentation at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Malawi Annual Lakeshore Conference in Mangochi on Friday, University of Malawi associate professor of economics Ronald Mangani said Malawi is getting poorer with demographic pressure being the biggest risk as the population is expected to swell to 44 million by 2050.
He said with no substitute for industrialisation and transformation, efforts to reduce poverty cannot materialise as industrialisation plays a bigger role in development and economic growth.
MW2063 is anchored on three key pillars, namely agriculture productivity and commercialisation; industrialisation; and urbanisation which are to be catalysed by seven enablers, namely mind-set change; effective governance system; public sector performance; private sector dynamism; human capital development; economic infrastructure; and environmental sustainability.
