President Mutharika said this during his address to this year’s 20th Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa-COMESA Heads of State and Government summit in Lusaka Zambia. President Mutharika said despite all odds, Malawi has made tremendous progress in all sectors of the economy.

“As a country, we are also doing our best to improve our economy so that we can participate in the regional economic affairs as a stronger country. But Malawi’s economic path has been a steep road to climb in the last four years. I am delighted to report that we have made progress against the odds,” said President Mutharika.

The Malawi leader added that when he came to lead Malawi in 2014, his administration found a very difficult economic situation. There was a deficit that nearly equaled annual national budget. There was simply no money because of the massive looting of government resources that we called Cashgate.

“In 2015, we had a double tragedy of national floods and drought in one year. Our crops failed and there was hunger throughout the country. In 2016, we had another drought and crops failed again. There was national hunger.

Throughout this time, Malawi had no budgetary support from any donor. But we achieved economic recovery without donor budget support through crises of national disasters,” explained Professor Mutharika.

The Malawi leader said despite having no donor support and by adopting a small government and a big private sector, the country is more than ready to be part of the regional economic integration.

“We are also implementing a robust Foreign Direct Investment program. Malawi has significantly improved on the Global Doing Business Index. Our goal is to have smaller Government and a bigger private sector. We believe this is the way the region must go.

Malawi is doing everything possible to become a dependable partner and team player in the region,” said the President.

Earlier, at Kamuzu International Airport in Lilongwe on his departure to Lusaka Zambia, His Excellency the President Professor Arthur Peter Mutharika said this year’s COMESA Heads of State and Government’s summit will help Malawi fully adopt digital technologies that will help in the enhancement of the country’s economic growth.

The Comesa Heads of State summit is designed to rally member states towards full adoption of digital technologies to reduce digitization disparities in most sectors in the COMESA region.

The theme for this year Summit is: COMESA: Towards Digital Economic Integration.