Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism will on Thursday this week launch the Malawi Trade Portal—a one-stop website for trade related regulatory information for import, export and transit trade.
The trade portal complements World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Trade Facilitation, to which Malawi is a signatory. The agreement obliges governments to be transparent and facilitate information to businesses.
Principal Secretary for Industry, Trade and Tourism Cliff Chiunda, in a statement last week, said to turn Malawi into a producing and exporting country, government has embarked on a drive to facilitate trade and investment.
“Towards this end, the Malawi Trade Portal is aimed at providing easy access to trade-related regulatory information to enhance transparency and accountability,” he said.
Chiunda said the trade portal, which is expected to be launched by Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism Joseph Mwanamvekha in Blantyre, will help to reduce the time traders spend to get proper documentation to do trade and that the expected result will be improved ease of doing business due to reduced trading time and cost.
Information that can be found on the portal includes all commercial laws and regulations governing import, export and transit of commercial goods, procedures and requirements for processing licences and various permits and samples of these application forms.
The portal also contains information on which goods are prohibited, restricted and other non-tariff measures and the entire catalogue of applicable tariffs linked to commodity classification.
The trade portal, developed with financial and technical assistance from the World Bank Group, is expected to help improve Malawi’s rankings in World Bank’s Doing Business Index and the Global Competitiveness Index.
The trade portal can be accessed on www.malawitradeportal.gov.mw.
