By Staff Reporter
President Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera has challenged stakeholders at the first ever Private Sector Lab to explore and find ways of improving the local business environment to ensure growth of business in the country.
President Chakwera was speaking today at the launch of the Private Sector Labs at Bingu Convention Centre (BICC) in Lilongwe.
The Malawi leader said there is a need to remove all the challenges that prevent the growth of business in the country. President Chakwera cited factors such as political climate, friendly tax regime, good digital infrastructure, access to business financing as some of the other factors the gathering should consider discussing.
‘’In case you have already forgotten, I said that the question we are here to answer together is: what must we change in order make Malawi a place where business and investments that desire to produce valuable things find it easy to expand, export and employ?
“We must be brave enough to say and hear the things that need to change administratively, legislatively and politically in order for business to thrive, because the time for business obstacles that we allowed to multiply over time is over,” said President Chakwera.
President Chakwera emphasized that the resolutions made during the Labs will be taken on board and will help in easing the manner and cost of doing business in the country.
‘’Our central objective in all the changes we will resolve to make in this lab is to ease the manner and cost of doing business in Malawi. And because businesses vary in size, I have designed this initial private sector labs to target large corporates, to be followed by labs targeting SMES and cooperatives, so as to ensure the roadblocks to the growth of businesses of similar size are contended with and tackled at the same time,” said President Chakwera.
The Private Sector Labs is an initiative of President Chakwera and being championed by the Presidential Delivery Unity in OPC in collaboration with the Malawi Investment and Trade Centre and the Ministry of Trade and Industry. This maiden initiative will focus on identifying and addressing persistent impediments to foreign investment and the growth of businesses in the country
