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MEFMI Assists Malawi Conduct a Debt Sustainability Analysis

  • June 4, 2019
  • Posted by: admin
  • Categories: Current News, debt management
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The Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development in Malawi conducted a Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA) with MEFMI’s technical assistance from 6 to 15 May 2019 at Linde Motel in Dowa District, Malawi. The workshop was held against a backdrop of a sharp increase in public debt in Malawi, from 29.7 percent of GDP in 2010 to 57.6 percent of GDP as at end 2018.

The workshop was officially opened by the Director of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance, Dr. MacDonald Mwale. In his remarks, Dr. Mwale said that the workshop was taking place at an opportune time when the budget for the financial year 2019/2020 was being prepared. He said that the Government of Malawi attaches great importance to DSAs and that the authorities were looking forward to the findings of the DSA to inform the budget and economic management decisions going forward. He urged the participants to take the workshop seriously as it also provided them the opportunity to learn and build capacity on the use of the IMF/World Bank revised Debt Sustainability Framework (DSF) to conduct a DSA.

A total of 22 officials participated in the workshop, comprising 17 males and 5 females. These were drawn from the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development and Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM).
The workshop was facilitated by Messrs Leslie Mkandawire (independent consultant and a former staff of MEFMI and RBM), Johnson Nyella (MEFMI Accredited Fellow from the Central Bank of Tanzania), Yasin Mayanja (MEFMI Candidate Fellow from Ministry of Finance in Uganda) and Ms. Cristina Dimande of the MEFMI Secretariat.
The main output of the workshop is a draft report on the findings of the debt sustainability analysis. On the last day of the workshop, participants presented findings and recommendations of the DSA to senior officials in the Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development. The workshop also built capacity of participants to use the IMF/World Bank DSF on how to conduct a debt sustainability analysis.