{"id":5326,"date":"2011-09-22T06:44:09","date_gmt":"2011-09-22T06:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=5326"},"modified":"2011-09-22T06:44:09","modified_gmt":"2011-09-22T06:44:09","slug":"imf-says-ready-to-work-with-malawi-on-restoring-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2011\/09\/22\/imf-says-ready-to-work-with-malawi-on-restoring-aid\/","title":{"rendered":"IMF says ready to work with Malawi on restoring aid"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5327\" style=\"width: 282px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/IMF-and-debt.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5327\" src=\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/IMF-and-debt-272x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"IMF-and-debt\" width=\"272\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5327\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5327\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">User submitted pic<\/p><\/div>\n<p>* IMF program with Malawi \u201cwent off track\u201d \u2013 IMF VP<\/p>\n<p>* Malawian officials seeking to renegotiate frozen aid<\/p>\n<p>By Pascal Fletcher<\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON, Sept 21 (Reuters) \u2013 The International Monetary<br \/>\nFund is ready to discuss working with Malawi to try to get its<br \/>\nstalled IMF program back on track, the fund\u2019s vice-president<br \/>\nfor Africa Antoinette Sayeh said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>The IMF had approved a 3-year $79.4 million facility for<br \/>\nthe small southern African state in February last year but the<br \/>\nprogram was hit by the government\u2019s initial failure to devalue<br \/>\nthe Malawian kwacha and implement public finance management<br \/>\nreforms, among other issues.<\/p>\n<p>Malawi, which subsequently devalued the kwacha currency in<br \/>\nAugust, has relied heavily on foreign donor funds. But former<br \/>\ncolonial ruler Britain, its biggest bilateral donor, suspended<br \/>\naid worth $550 million in May over a diplomatic spat.<\/p>\n<p>Malawian officials have said the country will seek to<br \/>\nrenegotiate frozen aid at the meetings in Washington this week<br \/>\nof the IMF and the World Bank.<\/p>\n<p>Sayeh told Reuters the fund would be holding discussions<br \/>\nwith the Malawian delegation about the stalled IMF program.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe program went off track \u2026 in a significant way and we<br \/>\ncertainly want to be helpful to Malawi in trying to get them to<br \/>\nreturn it to track,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>President Bingu wa Mutharika has faced street riots by<br \/>\nprotestors who accuse him of ignoring civil liberties and<br \/>\ndamaging the economy, and 20 anti-government demonstrators were<br \/>\nkilled by security forces during protests in July.<\/p>\n<p>Sayeh said the IMF was ready to listen to proposals from<br \/>\nthe Malawian government.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe situation has certainly deteriorated in a big way and<br \/>\nMalawi also has a lot of work to do in restoring its<br \/>\nrelationships with key donors, which is an important task,\u201d she<br \/>\nsaid.<\/p>\n<p>But she said it was too early to give further details of<br \/>\nthe discussions. \u201cIt\u2019s quite early days, they\u2019ve just arrived<br \/>\nand we\u2019re just starting to talk to them,\u201d Sayeh said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMalawi of course had in the past made very good progress.<br \/>\n\u2026 We certainly want to help them to continue to make that<br \/>\nprogress,\u201d she added.<br \/>\n(Reporting by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Richard Chang)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>* IMF program with Malawi \u201cwent off track\u201d \u2013 IMF VP * Malawian officials seeking to renegotiate frozen aid By [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[365,661,820,443],"class_list":["post-5326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","tag-aid","tag-donor","tag-imf","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}