President Professor Arthur Peter Mutharika on Tuesday had audience with European Union (EU) Commissioner of Development Adris Piebalgs where they discussed the need to finalise EU non budgetary package of 600 million Euro over a period of 7 years.
The meeting was held at the United Nation General Assembly Headquarters in New York.
“We discussed many things including finalisation of the EU non budgetary package of 600 million Euro over a period of 7 years”, said Mutharika.
On his part, Piebalgs said the discussions he had with the Malawi leader were fruitful.
“We have agreed that I should meet the Minister of Finance soon in Washington to discuss in more detail some issues that need to be resolved in order to restart the programme,” he said.
He said besides he discussed with Mutharika an old programme on governance, education and agriculture and rural development whose overall volume is close to 600 million euros.
“So for me my mandate is to put all things in place so that we can restart the programme with Malawi as we used to do before the cash gate because I think we had a very fruitful cooperation,” he said.
He also indicated he had dwelt on energy in their talk with Mutharika although energy is not EU’s focal programme, “but for Africa most programmes focus on energy and president Mutharika showed interest in the programme. We hope that we will resolve the remaining issues as soon as possible.”
