UN tips Malawi on economic recovery
The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) has urged Malawi to invest in key economic sectors that directly impact human life to realise quick recovery from the Covid-19 economic shocks.
Uneca acting director of macroeconomics and governance division Bartholomew Armah said this in a statement in relation to last week’s capacity development
training workshop for Malawian stakeholders on an Integrated Planning and Reporting Toolkit (IPRT).
He said IPRT seeks to support countries planning processes by making it possible to align national plans with national priorities as well as regional and global commitments such as Malawi 2063, the country’s long-term development plan.
Armah said: “Countries have limited resources and you cannot spend resources in all areas at the same time, you need to prioritise
“The timing of the IPRT is ideal since you are at the early stage of implementing the first 10-year plan of Malawi 2063, which offers an opportunity to evaluate the quality of your plan from the perspective of aligning national development priorities with regional and global commitments.”
He noted that weak global demand also hurt the country’s tobacco and other agricultural exports, and inflows of foreign direct investment.
On the importance of the toolkit, Armah said once the national plan data is uploaded in the IPRT system, the toolkit can be used to generate an alignment report which will indicate in percentages, the level of alignment at the goal, target and indicator
levels.
“This will inform the voluntary national reviews [VNR] report of your country. The IPRT is being configured to make the tracking of performance on the indicators of the national development plan more user-friendly,” he said.
Acting UN resident coordinator Rudolf Schwenk said ramifications from Covid-19 have undermined progress towards the attainment of the country’s long-term development plan.
He noted that economic growth and socio-economic development at both regional and individual country levels require periodic assessment of progress which is key for evidence-based planning and implementation of interventions.
He said a key observation during ECA’s analysis and in Malawi’s VNR process is that lack of data remains a serious handicap to efficient tracking of progress within and across member States.
National Planning Commission director general Thomas Chataghalala Munthali said the alignment of national, regional and global development agendas helps to have shared aspirations.
He said the tool will help planners to synchronise monitoring at both local council and national levels of the implementation of the Malawi 2063.
The IPRT is a web-based multi-level platform developed by ECA to assist member States to integrate regional and global agendas into national development plans.
The tool also assists countries to synchronise, measure and track progress in attaining Malawi 2063, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and African Union Agenda 2063. n
