Malawi cut its growth forecasts for this year and next in a mid-term budget review on Wednesday, as southern Africa suffers its worst regional\u00a0drought\u00a0in decades.<\/p>\n
Finance Minister Simplex Chithyola Banda forecast real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 1.8% in 2024, down from 2.3% projected at the start of this fiscal year.<\/p>\n
Banda said GDP is now expected to increase 4.0% in 2025, down from 4.3% seen previously, a copy of his speech showed.<\/p>\n
Agriculture is the mainstay of donor-dependent Malawi’s economy and the El Ni\u00f1o-induced drought has wiped out crops across the region, causing food shortages and denting growth.<\/p>\n
On Malawi’s debt-restructuring, Banda said the government had agreed terms with major bilateral creditors including China.<\/p>\n
Discussions with other creditors like India, the Kuwait Fund and the Saudi Fund for Development were being fast-tracked to try to reach a deal in line with the parameters of Malawi’s International Monetary Fund programme, he added.<\/p>\n
The programme, for about $175 million, was approved last year, as Malawi battled crippling shortages of fuel, medicines and fertilisers linked to foreign-currency shortages.<\/p>\n
Dollar scarcity has persisted, keeping fuel in short supply and annual inflation consistently above 30%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malawi cut its growth forecasts for this year and next in a mid-term budget review on Wednesday, as southern Africa suffers its worst regional\u00a0drought\u00a0in decades. Finance Minister Simplex Chithyola Banda forecast real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 1.8% in 2024, down from 2.3% projected at the start of this fiscal year. Banda said GDP […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,30],"tags":[274,3552,3551],"class_list":["post-14387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-southern-africa","tag-malawi","tag-malawi-gdp","tag-simplex-chithyola-banda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}