During the opening of the 2019 Annual Lakeshore Conference of the Economics Association of Malawi (Ecama), Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) Governor Dalitso Kabambe says Malawi’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) remains ‘very low and flat’ compared to other countries in the world.

According to Kabambe, the above is due to a rapid annual population growth rate of 2.9%. The conference was aimed at holding discussions on the challenges and opportunities of population growth for the country’s economic development.

The Executive Director for Ecama, Maleka Thula, revealed that the conference was themed following the 2018 Population and Housing Census, which showed that Malawi’s population is now at 17.6 million, a figure which is four times the country’s population size of 1966. Kabambe emphasized that regionally, Malawi is poorly performing on her GDP. “Our per capita GDP has permanently remained flat since independence [in 1964] while other countries have made huge strides in terms of realising high per capita GDP. If it was a race, we could say we are now tired,” he said.

On the other hand, National Account figures from RBM have shown that Agriculture’s contribution to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is expected to shrink by 0.2 percentage points in 2019 from 27.3% to 27.1%. The rapid population growth has been met with a decline in performance of the country’s cash crops; Tobacco, Cotton and more.