Capital hill has said the economy is bound to lose over $6 billion (about K5 trillion) this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is contained in a Malawi 2020 Voluntary National Review Report for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) delivered to the United Nations.

The report aligns the loss to the accommodation and food services, transportation and storage services, agriculture, and manufacturing sectors.

Ministry of Finance spokesperson, Williams Banda, said that the economy may go into a recession if the pandemic is not contained by December 2020.

Dean of Commerce at the Polytechnic, Betchani Tcheleni,  said that the slowdown in economic activities in the country points to a possible technical recession.

He said the figure could be higher than projected in the report.

“The implications have already started to be felt. First, new real investments may not occur, the existing ones may not be posting good results leading to low revenue collection,” Tcheleni said.

The report further indicates that after five years of SDGs implementation, Malawi is making significant progress on 29 of the 169 targets, representing 17 percent success rate.

However, the country is making moderate progress with performance gaps on 59 of the targets.