THE International Monetary Fund (IMF), often critical of Malawi’s poor fiscal management, has told the impoverished southern African nation to shut down loss-making parastatals, saying they were a drain on government resources. ”Trimming the public sector and reducing dependence on the budget would check problems of fiscal indiscipline which have affected expenditure control and fuelled inflation,” IMF resident representative Thomas Gibson was quoted by Saturday’s media as saying. Malawi’s inflation has hit 30%, fuelled by food scarcity and rise in maize prices. Gibson said the government should only monitor parastastals which it wants to maintain. Malawi, which has privatised 45 of the 100 parastatals earmarked for sale, spends up to $70-million in direct subsidies to loss-making parastatals. He said the giant grains firm agriculture development and marketing corporation (Admarc) should shed some of the non-core and loss making parastatals it controls, including textile manufacturers David Whitehead and Sons and Shire Buslines, the country’s biggest public transporter. ”These companies, which are consistent loss makers, require hundreds of millions to survive when they have nothing to do with the core function of Admarc,” Gibson was quoted as saying by the Nation newspaper.