Donors open to resuming budgetary support to Malawi

Government says multilateral donors are open to resuming budgetary support to Malawi this year. Minister of Finance Goodall Gondwe revealed this when presenting the mid-year budget review statement in Parliament on Friday.

For some time donors have been coy to help Malawi ever since news about theft of resources also known as Cashgate at capital hill hit headlines during former President Joyce Banda’s reign.

Government was later given conditionalities by some donors to achieve before aid could resume.

But on Friday the finance minister said it is encouraging that the donor community has observed a discernable improvement in public finance management reforms that are being pursued by the treasury separately from the public sector reforms spearheaded by the vice president.

He added that on the improvement of financial management, the country is more likely to receive budgetary support from multilateral organisations.

Gondwe said such organisations are among others the World Bank which has expressed publicly that it is confident that its earmarked amount of US$80 million as a budgetary support could be disbursed this financial year assuming their conditionalities would have been achieved.

“We also expect the European Union to disburse an amount of more than US$20 million and this will be on top of some budget support that had already been provided by the African Development Bank,” he said.

The minister further said that government expects that the IMF will disburse more than US$20 million when they complete their ninth review of the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) within this financial year.