Accelerated E-payments posture a must for Malawi

Over the independence holidays I found myself hopping from one boutique to a shop to a merchant here and a food outlet there, including getting into Limbe and Blantyre markets.

In the course of this city trotting shopping around, I made a very telling observation: the ubiquity of the parking fees collectors all over town and the fact that at every stop one was asked to pay a K50 (12.5 cents) fee regardless of whether one parked for seconds, a couple of minutes or hours.

I found such a parking fee ticketing system most bizarre because it has no sense of length or quantity of usage. One would also be tempted to believe that similarly this parking fee ticketing system pays no regard to the size of vehicles. Should that be confirmed to be the case it would be a “not well thought through” parking fee ticketing system considering that in the streets of Blantyre CBD (central Business District), especially along the Haile Selassie road, one finds cement laden trucks permanently parked; acting like warehouses on wheels.

Such is the level of hazards that are placed on our already space challenged city streets. Besides being an unpalatable sight, they present potential death traps to other motorists, especially on the night of weekends when other truckers are taking the cue and parking anywhere in the roads of the city of Blantyre. They do so in the most inconsiderate manner to other road users. Most have no triangle plates and reflectors. But then that is the state of affairs these days.

Coming back to ubiquitous parking fees stewards in the city just makes one wonder whether there could not be a better approach to the whole venture: starting with taking the ticketing system onto an electronic platform where the money is paid not through the fifty kwacha notes in return of which one gets a flimsy and not very authentic looking tiny ticket. Granted that at fifty kwacha the fees are nothing but a token but because each motorist pays numerously in the course of a day, they might accumulate and account for something of substance in the end.

If such be the case then the current fee ticketing approach in the city might just be a venture whose fruits do not go to the intended purpose of the city getting revenue to run some of the critical service delivery to its citizens.

As the nation embarks on the first steps of the next fifty years of independence there is urgent need to step up our progressive/smart think. This includes the way payments and transactions are made for all goods and services: public and otherwise.

The area of focus must go beyond the minute, in the grand scheme of payments to state agencies, business of parking fees but even business registration licenses , fire arms licenses, business premises licenses and indeed the entire breath and depth of payments to government and any other service providers needs to be done using electronic platforms.

Advantages for embracing this way of doing business abound: efficiencies, cost savings, auditability and traceability of transactions including the fact that the information can be easily retrievable for all manner of management purposes by the authorities: decision and policy makers, besides the fact that such would demonstrate the fact that Malawi is a serious place to invest and do business. This will result in increased attraction to foreign direct investment.

Most significantly Malawi needs to embrace an accelerated electronic payments posture and culture because it is one of the key avenues to fight the scourge of crime manifested by the prolonged periods of armed robberies targeted at economic actors transacting using or moving around large sums of monies for various purposes and intentions.

Pushing for a zero or significantly diminished usage of cash in our economy in preference for electronic platforms for payments will go a long way in making everyone in Malawi safe. Thugs and hoodlums will significantly find their business not rewarding and that will motivate them to consider investing their energies onto more noble avenues of earning a living.

In any case a vibrant electronic payment culture in Malawi will move the nation to a vibrant, more efficient and highly productive economic plane that creates more employment opportunities for Malawian youths hence magnetically attracting them away from a life of crime into one of productive youths that constructively contribute to nation building through payment of taxes.