MEFMI Delivers In-country Works on Financial Programming & Policy for Reserve Bank of Malawi

The Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) recently received technical training assistance on Financial Programing and Policy (FPP) from MEFMI. The training aimed to strengthen the capacity of officials at RBM, in evidence based planning and timely provision of policy analysis for policy makers.  The capacity will assist the officials to have a holistic and coordinated approach towards economic forecasting, as they meet with international partners.

Participants for the training workshop were drawn from the RBM, the Malawi Ministry of Finance and the National Statistical Office of Malawi. The workshop was officially opened by the RBM Director of Economic Policy Research, Dr. Kisu Simwaka, who was accompanied by Dr. Austin Chiumia, Principle Economist, Macroeconomic Modelling.  Dr Chiumia is also a MEFMI Accredited Fellow.

Dr. Simwaka mentioned that Malawi has over the last decade faced macroeconomic disequilibria. He said that, like most African countries, Malawi had to undertake macroeconomic stabilisation and structural adjustment based on agreed IMF-supported adjustment programs in an effort to bring about internal and external balance. Progress has been made in macroeconomic stability following the undertaking of these reforms. He mentioned that RBM was keen to design a financial program as a simple and continuous medium-term forecasting model, which looks for early warning indicators that can predict crises that could be very costly to the real economy.

The FPP training provided capacity to officials of the RBM, Ministry of Finance and  the National Statistical Office of Malawi to develop a framework that integrates all the four macroeconomic accounts, with internal consistency checks based on financial programming.

A total of thirty one (31) officials were trained on FPP and how to construct an FPF in Excel. The group presentations made by participants also exhibited remarkable improved skills in analytic work. They presented a number of data consistency checks which had been constructed within the FPF, and gave economic implications for each of them.

The intermediate outcome of this training is expected to be exhibited by participants’ ability to construct and analyse FPF, as well as to produce economic prospects reports on Malawi in the medium-term. In addition, they are expected to use the knowledge acquired during the training to commence the construction of the Malawi FPP model.

A recommendation from the training is for the official who attended this workshop to have regular internal meetings to discuss macroeconomic data.  This should assist the three institutions to deliberate among themselves with the ultimate goal of having a consistent framework for policy formulation.