He listed the essentials at a meeting with top officials of the country’s think-tank, the National Planning Commission (NPC) as follows:

.Sufficient food

.Clean water

.Health facility

.Electricity

.Access to a tarmac road

.A good secondary School

.A Community Technical College

He asked: How do we create wealth to make Malawi a middle income economy?

His answer: “First, we need to make Malawi a producing and exporting country and stop being a predominantly importing and consuming country. This is our vision.”

He said for this to happen, Malawi needed to address the critical forces of production:

.We need to have a skilled labour force and a knowledgeable society. This is one reason why I want every community to have a secondary school and a community technical college.

.We need to create new capital for most Malawians. This is also why we are encouraging foreign direct investment.

.Locally, we have the resources. We have the assets. What we need is to turn our resources and assets into capital.

.However, we need a positive mindset to drive our collective efforts towards our goals. We need to instill the spirit of patriotism, integrity and hardwork.

.We cannot get anywhere with a negative mindset. Let us plan to change the national mindset systematically.

NPC BE PROPERLY FUNDED

Saying like many Malawians, he had much faith in the NPC, Mutharika urged the Ministry of Finance to ensure that this Commission properly funded.

“ And let me say this: we should never make the mistake relegating the funding of this Commission to donors. We will lose control of our planning the moment we do that.”

He said If the Commission was to implement our homegrown policies, “then we must take full responsibility of it. Let us make it our priority.”