By Robert Kumwenda
President for Leather Industries Association of Malawi (LIAMA) Edward Malunga has asked organizations to help Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
Malunga said SMEs are economic engine for development for any country.
He said as an association their aim is to enhance economic development for Malawi.
“As much as we aware that government is trying to sensitize Malawians to export more the much needed effort is to see that we industrialize for the economy to boom.
“Because when we manufacture a lot we will substitute importation,” he said.
He said their activities are slow because they have just started saying that organizations that do not know them they should believe and trust them.
Malunga said that they want to coordinate people in the leather industries like farmers, butcher men, hides and skin traders, tanners, manufacturers of foot wear, leather goods and allied products to develop the skills that they already have for them to know how things are a made.
“The aim is to create self-reliance activities and creation of jobs. We also want to coordinate manufactures to form some kind of cluster to supply more goods within a short period of time to satisfy customer requirements,” he said.
He commended government for opening up more technical colleges saying that this is a positive development in as far as youth empowerment is concerned because graduates from this colleges will venture into SMEs.
He further said that they want to see the birth of new big companies for leather in tanning and foot wear manufacturing as well as leather goods.
LIAMA was established in February 2016 and it has 150 paid up members national wide.
