These are the Malawi Government’s principal policies for encouraging and assisting private investment:

o        The Government is fully committed to enacting these policies and will take whatever measures may be necessary to ensure their prompt implementation.

o        The statement is supplemented by the Investors Guide containing detailed information of importance to investors.

o        The Government seeks to encourage the private sector to assume the leading role in developing the national economy.

o        The thrust of the Government’s efforts will be to facilitate rather than regulate private investment.  This is consistent with the Statement of Development Policies issued by the Government in 1987.

o        To create a more conducive investment climate, the Government will continue to pursue stable macro economic policies by exercising fiscal and monetary discipline and maintaining a realistic exchange rate of Malawi Kwacha (MK), the country’s currency.

o        Specific measures to deregulate the private sector and create new investment opportunities have already been enacted, including the elimination of price controls, the termination of import restrictions and of the accompanying import licenses, divestiture of state-owned companies and steps to rectify the external transport situation.

The Vision of Malawi is that “By 2020, Malawi as God fearing nation, will be secure, democratically mature, environmentally sustainable, self reliant with equal opportunities for and active participation by all, having social services, vibrant culture and religious values and technically driven middle-income country”.

To operationalise the Vision, the Government in the medium term has come up with a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) which is based on four pillars of: sustainable pro-poor growth; human capital development; improving the quality of life for the most vulnerable; and good governance. In view of the Government commitment to private sector development, the Government has come up with a supplementary document namely, the Economic Growth Strategy that will strengthen pillar I of the PRSP and attaches greater emphasis to the development of the trade and investment sector.

The Economic Growth Strategy outlines ways of promoting different investments with strong collaboration with foreign firms.  More specifically the Economic Growth Strategy has identified high growth sectors such as cotton/textiles/garments; agro-processing of fruits and vegetables, rice, macadamia nuts and cassava; mining (i.e. strontianite – a rare earths project, bauxite, and uranium; and the greater development of the tourism sector.