From falling behind to catching up : A country economic memorandum for Malawi (English)

Despite decades of development efforts supported by significant amounts of foreign aid, Malawi has experienced weak and volatile economic growth over a sustained period of time and has fallen behind its peers. Moreover, growth has been distributed unequally... See More + Despite decades of development efforts supported by significant amounts of foreign aid, Malawi has experienced weak and volatile economic growth over a sustained period of time and has fallen behind its peers. Moreover, growth has been distributed unequally, with little impact on poverty. Per capita income has improved only minimally in the 50 years since Malawi’s independence, and Malawi now has one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world. This new Country Economic Memorandum (CEM), aims to improve understanding of the puzzle of Malawi’s weak performance and to identify ways for Malawi to achieve robust and stable growth that includes the poor. This book summarizes and consolidates the extensive background technical work conducted for the CEM. It is structured as follows. First, it discusses Malawi’s macroeconomic situation and challenges in fiscal management, reviewing and drawing lessons from the instability, slippages, and shocks that Malawi has experienced since independence. Second, given how critical the agriculture sector is to poverty reduction in Malawi, it explores the current state of agricultural markets. Third, it looks at the factors that may constrain higher growth in the future and discusses challenges in private sector development and job creation. Finally, building on the analysis of challenges, the overview concludes with a summary of policy recommendations aimed at helping Malawi to achieve more robust and sustainable growth and poverty reduction in the future. The full list of background papers, each of which is available for download, is provided as appendix A to this book.  See Less -