Africa-Press – Malawi. Vice President Saulos Chilima has hinted that the government is on a drive to initiative programmes that “will put money in people’s pockets” to enable Malawians to cope with the rising cost of living.
He also pointed out that the national budget that would be presented to Parliament soon would unveil programmes that would accelerate economic activities at constituency and district levels.
Chilima said this in Lilongwe yesterday after engaging the private sector on the Social Economic Recovery Plan (Serp) which aims at building an emergency response system that would put the country on the path to recovery in the wake of the Covid pandemic.
The Vice President added that President Lazarus Chakwera would deliver his State of the Nation Address soon, to be followed by the budget statement. “I think we will be rechanneling some of the resources that are there in the initiatives that we are already running now so that we can put financial resources to more productive use.
“In short, we are aware of the hardships and [the] next [this] is to prescribe solutions and I am 100 percent certain that the next budget statement is going in that direction so that we can alleviate the pain that Malawians are facing and experiencing,” Chilima said.
National Planning Commission Director General Thomas Munthali said the idea of the recovery plan was hatched to inculcate the idea that, working together, the country could revive the economy.
He said, to achieve this, the private sector would be engaged in the task of improving people’s living standards through the provision of jobs. “They needed to understand the most important stimulants that the private sector would require, especially now that the national budget is being formulated,” he said.
Chakwera unveiled the Covid Serp. On December 21 2021, when he tasked Chilima to engage stakeholders. The Vice President also engaged development partners yesterday and is expected to engage a number of national socio-economic development players.
Mathews Kasanda is a journalist who holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from University of Malawi (The Polytechnic). In 2015, Media Institute of Southern Africa awarded him the Best Print Media Education Journalist of the Year accolade. He joined Times Group Newsroom in September 2019.
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