Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism has started consultations to develop the second National Export Strategy (NES 2), which will cover the period between 2020 and 2025.

The second NES will be built on key lessons learnt from the first strategy, which was launched in 2012 and expired last year.

Speaking during the meeting, Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism Principal Secretary Ken Ndala admitted that the first NES did not achieve most of its key targets.

“Upon expiry of the strategy in 2018 exports as a share of imports were at 32.6 percent and the rate of growth of exports in value terms in value terms averaged 4.2 percent”

“This has been the case because of deficient resource mobilization with heavy dependence on development partners and donor agencies,” he said.

When it was launched in 2013, the main goal of NES was to raise exports as a share of imports from 51.5 percent in 2010 to 75.7 percent in 2017

However, Malawi still faces a significant trade deficit, importing about twice the value of goods it exports, raising questions of the effectiveness of the first exports.

In the recent review of NES it was found that Malawi was able to strength its oil seed sub-sector, but globally exports lagged behind imports with the country’s export basket remaining narrow and market diversification slow.