Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development Goodall Gondwe has added his voice on how the country’s economy is progressing, saying the economy is passing through tough times.

Gondwe was quoted saying this in one of the daily papers in the country [Nation Newspaper of November 18, 2014]

“Nobody would say we have normal economic performance for a country with a huge amount of domestic borrowing, a country with a huge amount of arrears, that we inherited, of more than K100 billion, a country whose donors withdrew budget support.

“What is important is to sit down and look at the problems we are in”, said Gondwe.

Gondwe blamed the plundering of Public funds at Capitol Hill dubbed cashgate which happened during the rain of People’s Party regime under Dr. Joyce Banda, saying this have disturbed the path the economy had taken.

However, Gonwdwe expressed optimism that the country’s economy will soon be on track.

“I have strong confidence that we will resume to normality in the course of time and you will find that within a short period of time, we will resume single digit and high growth rates”, he said.

Commenting on the Kwacha floatation, Gondwa said his ministry is doing whatever it can to control the situation by among other things, ensuring the implementation of a tight monetary policy.

The recent depreciation of Kwacha against major foreign currency especially the dollar has led to the increase of various commodities on the market putting Malawians under panic.

The development also forced Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority (MERA) to hike fuel pump price.

As this was not enough, on Tuesday this week, Carlsberg Malawi hiked prices of alcohol and non alcoholic drinks due to the same factor.