Africa-Press – Malawi. Malawi Investment and Trade Centre (MITC) has said 35 local and foreign investors expressed willingness to establish businesses valued at $808 million (about K666 billion) in the 2021-22 financial year.
In a published statement, MITC further says the investment pledges have risen by $738.4 million when compared to the $69.6 million recorded in the 2020-21 financial year. The investors are eying key sectors such as agriculture, agro processing, manufacturing, energy, mining, tourism, ICT and services.
MITC Chief Executive Officer Paul Kwengwere said sectors that attracted the most significant investment interests include energy, at $344,932,068.00 representing 42.6 percent, mining at $202,199,000.00 representing 25 percent, agriculture and agro processing at $106,188,221.68 representing 13 percent, manufacturing at $81,640,870.00 representing 10 percent, services at $72,600,555.00 representing 8.9 percent and tourism at $490,415.00 representing 0.06 percent.
“The investment records for the last financial year have jumped with over 1,000 percent from the previous year despite the global economic slowdown resulting from the impacts of Covid. This shows that our investment promotion and attraction activities are not in vain. Nonetheless, our approach on investment promotion this year is more focused and targeted.
“We are specifically focusing on heightening our engagements with Malawi foreign missions because we believe these are key in attracting FDI into Malawi. In addition, we are doing more investor-targeted initiatives this year; as such, we have prioritised to facilitate more business-to-business meetings as well as undertaking targeted investment missions,” Kwengere said.
He added that, once implemented, the investments will create 15,499 jobs. In an interview, economist Collen Kalua said the figures do not mean anything until the investments are made.
“There are a lot of factors that investors look at before investing in an economy; for example, the political situation, the economic situation and I am not sure at the current situation we would experience such huge investment. We have seen the MITC releasing such figures before but where are the investments?” Kalua wondered.
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