The President was speaking when he officially launched the Malawi Rural Electrification Programme-MAREP phase 8 in Mulanje on Wednesday afternoon.

President Mutharika’s remarks come after Kenya and Tanzania have approached Admarc to purchase maize.

Admarc has over 100,000 metric tonnes of maize in stock from last season.

At the same time, Malawi is also expected to realise a better maize harvest this year as compared to last year.

But in his statement, Mutharika appealed to Malawians to take good care of their maize and not to succumb to any kind of pressure to sell.

"Don't sell maize to vendors. Wait for ADMARC to start buying at a good price," he urged.

"It doesn't matter whether there is pressure from anywhere. It's our maize and we are not going to sell it just like that. I don't want what happened at one time to happen again. We once rushed to sell our maize to Kenya only to face hunger and start buying maize from Kenya again."

Malawi suffered severe hunger in 2003. While this was due to drought that hit the country that year, the sale of the previous season's maize from the strategic grain reserves aggravated the situation.

Government sold that maize to Kenya and other African countries on advice from some donors.