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In line with his dream of turning Malawi into an industrialized economy before he leaves office in 2024, President Prof Peter Mutharika has taken it upon himself to sell the country to global investors during his time at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) when he took to the podium during a parallel session on Business Opportunities in Malawi on Thursday, President Mutharika dissected the country’s potential as an investment destination in key areas such as security, tax regime, human resource, market availability among others.
“You have very good reasons for coming to invest in Malawi. First of all, Malawi has the resources that you need. You can be assured of raw material resources, security, market availability and a business climate conducive to investment. Malawi has risen by 23 points on the Doing Business Index in the past twelve (12) months. And the Preferential Trade Area (PTA) Bank recently highlighted Malawi as an investment haven in the Southern African region,” said President Mutharika.
He added, “In Malawi, you can invest in Agriculture and agro-processing, Energy, Mining, Tourism, Manufacturing, Infrastructure, Information Communication Technology (ICT), and Financial services, to mention a few”
He intimated to the gathering on how his government is reforming institutions and systems so as to acquire desirable levels of foreign direct investment (FDI) “Africa is growing economically. Malawi is part of this growth.
Like other African countries, Malawi is registering growth in the private sector. We are thus far carrying out serious institutional reforms to secure and consolidate our growth. We are particularly consolidating the investment environment. Malawi has a lot business opportunities and potentials. As far as investment opportunities are concerned, Malawi cannot be ignored,” he said while calling upon the gathering to access copies of Malawi’s investment compendium on bankable projects.
The Malawi leader further assured potential investors of a readily-available market for their products and services.
“We have the labour and the market for your products. Malawi has friendly, disciplined, trainable and hard-working labour force. We are party to a wider market under the Tripartite Agreement, which comprises the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the East African Community (EAC), which has a combined total market of over 700 million people. This offers enormous market opportunities to investors. Currently, we have launched a programme towards the establishment of Africa wide Free Trade Area. Furthermore, Malawian exports enjoy preferential market access to the EU, under the Everything But Arms (EBA) initiative, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), Japan, China, India, and a number of bilateral duty free agreements with several countries,” he said.
Since the days of campaigning before the 2014 elections, President Mutharika has always emphasized on how he wants to transform Malawi through massive investment, job and wealth creation which lead to meaningful real income for common people.
