Govt to enhance ease of doing business

Malawi Government has promised to create and sustain a pro-business environment to make it cheaper, easier and faster to do business in Malawi by reducing regulatory burden and red-tape.

Speaking on Friday in Malawi’s commercial capital city of Blantyre during a forum on doing business reforms, which included World Bank and representatives from the private sector, Minister of Industry and Trade Joseph Mwanamvekha, said the changes will ensure that Malawi improves on World Bank Doing Business report—a survey which measures ease of doing business across the globe based on 10 indicators.

After crashing 10 steps in the previous report, Malawi slipped by one rank to 164 out of 189 in the 2015 report, 28 places from being the worst place to do business in the world, sending wrong signals to potential investors.

According to last year’s report, which is the latest, Malawi dropped four steps to 151 on getting credit, slumped nine steps to 132 on protecting minority investors, fell 11 steps to 103 on paying taxes and improved four steps to 157 on starting a business.

Mwanamvekha noted that a successful private sector will translate into more economic activity and value addition, the benefits of which are multi-dimensional while government would benefit through increased tax revenue.

He said the Malawi’s ranking on the ease of doing business has been declining over the years despite reforms that have been initiated.

“The decline in the ranking does not imply that we have not initiated any reforms, but rather that other countries are reforming faster than ourselves over the same period. Furthermore, we have not been able to communicate the reforms to the private sector properly,” said Mwanamvekha.

World Bank senior private sector development specialist Ephraim Chilima, said Malawi has been initiating a lot of reforms, but implementation is the main problem.

“The World Bank has signed a memorandum of understanding [MoU] with Malawi, which includes technical support on business reforms.

“The MoU also includes a template of activities and reforms that will be implemented,” he said.

According to Ministry of Industry and Trade, government has enacted business-related bills, including Business Registration Act, Business Licensing Act and Companies Act amended in 2012.

Government is also computerising processes at the Registrar General’s office to reduce time taken to process applications for business registrations.

Currently, digital business name search is functional and is expected that the system will go live in February this year, according to ministry officials.