President Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera has received assurance from the European Union for possible resumption of direct budgetary support to Malawi, a move he says may play a part in the country’s transition to a middle income economy.
This was established on Tuesday during a bilateral discussion with Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen the European Union (EU) in Doha, Qatar on the sidelines of the 5th Summit of the Least Developed Countries (LDC).
The Malawi leader said all what the LDCs need to do is a proper domestication of the Doha Plan of Action from which the LDCs will grow through the Sustainable Development Goals.
However, President Chakwera bemoaned the growing public debts among LDC member countries saying this is slowing down efforts of graduating to middle income status.
President Chakwera singled out this problem as chief among many that in turn has been perpetuating poverty in the LDCs.
The Malawi leader further said that global shocks such as the Covid pandemic, wars and have negatively affected Malawi’s economic growth in recent years.
While expressing gratitude for the EUs support to the country’s development endeavours, President Chakwera called has appealed to the EU to consider resuming budgetary support to the country.
He said the EU budgetary support will invigorate the forex inflow on the market.
On its part the EU has promised that they will consider the request and they indicated that they may resume financing some targeted areas such as education.