Slow donor inflows may affect Malawi budget: Finance Minister
Date 2009/10/27 11:06:35 | Topic: Afran
| LILONGWE (Reuters) - Slow donor inflows may affect Malawi's domestic borrowing targets for the 2009/10 fiscal year, and the government could borrow more than planned due to lower donor support, Finance Minister Ken Kandodo said on Monday.
Malawi's government plans to cut domestic borrowing in the current fiscal year by about 1.3 percent of gross domestic product from last year's 1.4 percent, but Kandodo said the target could be missed.
"On the expenditure side, we are well within the budget framework, however, we have experienced slow donor disbursements which may affect our domestic borrowing targets," he told Reuters in an interview.
In the last five years the southern African nation has managed to reduce domestic debt from 25 percent of GDP at the beginning of 2004 to 11.5 percent in September last year.
The International Monetary Fund last year advised the government to reduce domestic borrowing because it would crowd out the private sector and slow growth.
Malawi, which relies heavily on donor assistance for its development budget, expects about $578 million from donors this financial year, down from $642 million last year.
Donor inflows account for over 50 percent of the country's development budget.
Kandodo said he would still manage to contain inflation in single digits and that the economy would expand as forecast.
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