The scandal, dubbed “Cashgate” by maravipost and other local media, forced President Banda upon returning from a long trip in the US to dissolve her cabinet on Oct. 10 and accept international investigators to help in probing the allegations.
“This is my fight, this is our fight as a nation, as Malawians,” Banda said in an interview yesterday in Kuwait after attending an Arab-Africa summit. “We intend to implement it with or without donors because it’s our nation, our people that suffer as a result. This is a cancer.”
The “Cashgate” scandal and donor aid suspension threatens to derail an economic revival that has been underway since last year when Joyce Banda, 63, succeeded Bingu wa Mutharika, who died in office in April 2012.
The IMF told the Banda Government it is delaying the disbursement of $20 million to Malawi “until the fiscal situation could be clarified and necessary corrective measures put in place.”
Things have to really be bad when the IMF director Christine Lagarde who earlier in the year met Malawi’s president, Joyce Banda, praising her for devaluing the national currency in line with prescriptions from the Washington-based international lender that were designed to make the economy competitive.
The Reserve Bank of Malawi says economic growth will probably be curtailed this year from an earlier projection of 5.8 percent, while inflation is projected to average 28.5 percent.
In May 2014 President Joyce Banda and her People’s Party will contest presidential, parliamentary and local government elections against formidable opponents like Peter Mutharika of Democratic Progressive Party(DPP) , Young Atupele Muluzi of United Democratic Front (UDF) and the up and coming Malawi Congress Party new leader Dr Lazarus Chakwera.
